d him by the arms, and laughed as he wept
and kept repeating, 'Oneata, Oneata.'

* * * * *

From that day began his martyrdom. He worked hard under his overseer,
but ran away again and again, only to be brought back and tied up.
Sometimes, as he toiled, he would look longingly across the narrow
strait of sunlit water at the bright green little island of Manono, six
miles away; and twice he stole down to the shore at night, launched
a canoe and paddled over towards it. But each time the plantation
guard-boat brought him back; and then Burton put him in irons. Once he
swam the whole distance, braving the sharks, and, reaching the island,
hid in a taro swamp till the next night. He meant to steal food and a
canoe--and seek for Oneata. But the Manono people found him, and, though
he fought desperately, they overcame and bound him, and the women cursed
him for a Tafito{*} devil, a thieving beast, and beat and pelted him as
the men carried him back to the plantation, tied up like a wild boar, to
get their ten dollars reward for him from the manager. And Burton gave
him thirty lashes as a corrective.

* The Samoans apply the term 'Tafito' to all natives of the
Gilbert Group and other equatorial islands. The word is an
abbreviation of Taputeauea (Drummond's Island), and 'Tafito'
is synonymous for 'savage'--in some senses.

Then came long, long months of unceasing toil, broken only by attempts
to escape, recapture, irons and more lashes. The rest of the native
labourers so hated and persecuted him that at last the man's nature
changed, and he became desperate and dangerous. No one but Burton dared
strike him now, for he would spring at an enemy's throat like a madman,
and half strangle him ere he could be dragged away stunned, bruised and
bleeding. When his day's slavery was over he would go to his hut, eat
his scanty meal of rice, biscuit and yam in sullen silence, and brood
and mutter to himself. But from the day of his first flogging no word
ever escaped his set lips. All these things he told afterwards to Von
Hammer, the supercargo of the _Mindora_, when she came to Mulifanua with
a cargo of new 'boys.'{*}

* Polynesian labourers are generally termed 'boys.'

Von Hammer had been everywhere in the North Pacific, so Burton took him
to Ridan's hut, and called to the 'sulky devil' to come out. He came,
and sullenly followed the two men into the manager's big sitting-