een for Otoo, I should not be here today.

Of numerous instances, let me give one. I had had some experience in
blackbirding before I went pearling in the Paumotus. Otoo and I were on
the beach in Samoa--we really were on the beach and hard aground--when
my chance came to go as recruiter on a blackbird brig. Otoo signed on
before the mast; and for the next half-dozen years, in as many ships, we
knocked about the wildest portions of Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that he
always pulled stroke-oar in my boat. Our custom in recruiting labor was
to land the recruiter on the beach. The covering boat always lay on its
oars several hundred feet off shore, while the recruiter's boat, also
lying on its oars, kept afloat on the edge of the beach. When I landed
with my trade goods, leaving my steering sweep apeak, Otoo left his
stroke position and came into the stern sheets, where a Winchester lay
ready to hand under a flap of canvas. The boat's crew was also armed,
the Sniders concealed under canvas flaps that ran the length of the
gunwales.

While I was busy arguing and persuading the woolly-headed cannibals to
come and labor on the Queensland plantations Otoo kept watch. And often
and often his low voice warned me of suspicious actions and impending
treachery. Sometimes it was the quick shot from his rifle, knocking a
nigger over, that was the first warning I received. And in my rush to
the boat his hand was always there to jerk me flying aboard. Once, I
remember, on SANTA ANNA, the boat grounded just as the trouble began.
The covering boat was dashing to our assistance, but the several score
of savages would have wiped us out before it arrived. Otoo took a flying
leap ashore, dug both hands into the trade goods, and scattered tobacco,
beads, tomahawks, knives, and calicoes in all directions.

This was too much for the woolly-heads. While they scrambled for the
treasures, the boat was shoved clear, and we were aboard and forty feet
away. And I got thirty recruits off that very beach in the next four
hours.

The particular instance I have in mind was on Malaita, the most savage
island in the easterly Solomons. The natives had been remarkably
friendly; and how were we to know that the whole village had been taking
up a collection for over two years with which to buy a white man's head?
The beggars are all head-hunters, and they especially esteem a white
man's head. The fellow who captured the head would receive the whole
collection