that there were white men and white men. On the
very day the schooner departed he was ordered to buy a chicken from
Samisee, the native Tongan missionary. But Samisee had sailed across
the lagoon and would not be back for three days. Mauki returned with
the information. He climbed the steep stairway (the house stood on piles
twelve feet above the sand), and entered the living room to report.
The trader demanded the chicken. Mauki opened his mouth to explain the
missionary's absence. But Bunster did not care for explanations. He
struck out with his fist. The blow caught Mauki on the mouth and lifted
him into the air. Clear through the doorway he flew, across the narrow
veranda, breaking the top railing, and down to the ground.

His lips were a contused, shapeless mass, and his mouth was full of
blood and broken teeth.

"That'll teach you that back talk don't go with me," the trader shouted,
purple with rage, peering down at him over the broken railing.

Mauki had never met a white man like this, and he resolved to walk small
and never offend. He saw the boat boys knocked about, and one of
them put in irons for three days with nothing to eat for the crime of
breaking a rowlock while pulling. Then, too, he heard the gossip of the
village and learned why Bunster had taken a third wife--by force, as was
well known. The first and second wives lay in the graveyard, under the
white coral sand, with slabs of coral rock at head and feet. They had
died, it was said, from beatings he had given them. The third wife was
certainly ill-used, as Mauki could see for himself.

But there was no way by which to avoid offending the white man who
seemed offended with life. When Mauki kept silent, he was struck and
called a sullen brute. When he spoke, he was struck for giving back
talk. When he was grave, Bunster accused him of plotting and gave him a
thrashing in advance; and when he strove to be cheerful and to smile,
he was charged with sneering at his lord and master and given a taste of
stick. Bunster was a devil.

The village would have done for him, had it not remembered the lesson
of the three schooners. It might have done for him anyway, if there had
been a bush to which to flee. As it was, the murder of the white men,
of any white man, would bring a man-of-war that would kill the offenders
and chop down the precious cocoanut trees. Then there were the boat
boys, with minds fully made up to drown him by accident at the first
op