ts
beaches by the southeast trade. That there has been a slight Melanesian
drift in the period of the northwest monsoon, is also evident.

Nobody ever comes to Lord Howe, or Ontong-Java as it is sometimes
called. Thomas Cook & Son do not sell tickets to it, and tourists do not
dream of its existence. Not even a white missionary has landed on its
shore. Its five thousand natives are as peaceable as they are primitive.
Yet they were not always peaceable. The Sailing Directions speak of
them as hostile and treacherous. But the men who compile the Sailing
Directions have never heard of the change that was worked in the hearts
of the inhabitants, who, not many years ago, cut off a big bark and
killed all hands with the exception of the second mate. The survivor
carried the news to his brothers. The captains of three trading
schooners returned with him to Lord Howe. They sailed their vessels
right into the lagoon and proceeded to preach the white man's gospel
that only white men shall kill white men and that the lesser breeds must
keep hands off. The schooners sailed up and down the lagoon, harrying
and destroying. There was no escape from the narrow sand-circle, no
bush to which to flee. The men were shot down at sight, and there was
no avoiding being sighted. The villages were burned, the canoes smashed,
the chickens and pigs killed, and the precious cocoanut trees chopped
down. For a month this continued, when the schooner sailed away; but the
fear of the white man had been seared into the souls of the islanders
and never again were they rash enough to harm one.

Max Bunster was the one white man on Lord Howe, trading in the pay of
the ubiquitous Moongleam Soap Company. And the Company billeted him
on Lord Howe, because, next to getting rid of him, it was the most
out-of-the-way place to be found. That the Company did not get rid of
him was due to the difficulty of finding another man to take his place.
He was a strapping big German, with something wrong in his brain.
Semi-madness would be a charitable statement of his condition. He was
a bully and a coward, and a thrice-bigger savage than any savage on the
island.

Being a coward, his brutality was of the cowardly order. When he
first went into the Company's employ, he was stationed on Savo. When a
consumptive colonial was sent to take his place, he beat him up with his
fists and sent him off a wreck in the schooner that brought him.

Mr. Haveby next selected a young