portunity to capsize the cutter. Only Bunster saw to it that the boat
did not capsize.

Mauki was of a different breed, and escape being impossible while
Bunster lived, he was resolved to get the white man. The trouble was
that he could never find a chance. Bunster was always on guard. Day
and night his revolvers were ready to hand. He permitted nobody to pass
behind his back, as Mauki learned after having been knocked down several
times. Bunster knew that he had more to fear from the good-natured, even
sweet-faced, Malaita boy than from the entire population of Lord Howe;
and it gave added zest to the programme of torment he was carrying out.
And Mauki walked small, accepted his punishments, and waited.

All other white men had respected his tambos, but not so Bunster.

Mauki's weekly allowance of tobacco was two sticks. Bunster passed them
to his woman and ordered Mauki to receive them from her hand. But this
could not be, and Mauki went without his tobacco. In the same way he was
made to miss many a meal, and to go hungry many a day. He was ordered to
make chowder out of the big clams that grew in the lagoon. This he could
not do, for clams were tambo. Six times in succession he refused to
touch the clams, and six times he was knocked senseless. Bunster knew
that the boy would die first, but called his refusal mutiny, and would
have killed him had there been another cook to take his place.

One of the trader's favorite tricks was to catch Mauki's kinky locks and
bat his head against the wall. Another trick was to catch Mauki unawares
and thrust the live end of a cigar against his flesh. This Bunster
called vaccination, and Mauki was vaccinated a number of times a week.
Once, in a rage, Bunster ripped the cup handle from Mauki's nose,
tearing the hole clear out of the cartilage.

"Oh, what a mug!" was his comment, when he surveyed the damage he had
wrought.

The skin of a shark is like sandpaper, but the skin of a ray fish is
like a rasp. In the South Seas the natives use it as a wood file in
smoothing down canoes and paddles. Bunster had a mitten made of ray fish
skin. The first time he tried it on Mauki, with one sweep of the hand
it fetched the skin off his back from neck to armpit. Bunster was
delighted. He gave his wife a taste of the mitten, and tried it out
thoroughly on the boat boys. The prime ministers came in for a stroke
each, and they had to grin and take it for a joke.

"Laugh, damn you, laugh!" w