ou've
squared him you're pretty safe. Got plenty fever medicine?' 'Lots.'
'Liquor?' 'Case of gin.'

'That'll keep you clear o' fever as much as anything, as long as the
case lasts. Always drink some when it's raining.' (It usually rained
nine days out of ten in New Britain). 'Now we'll take stock. I can tell
you I'm mighty glad to clear out o' this place--an' so will you be in a
couple o' months, if--you're alive.'

Having thus, in cheerful converse, somewhat enlightened me as to the
peculiar characteristics of Kabaira Bay and its inhabitants, my friend
had breakfast cooked, and whilst we were eating it, sent a messenger for
his friend Bobaran to come and make the acquaintance of the new white
man. During breakfast the trader gave me much further information, all
of which, as a man new to the ropes, I was very glad to obtain. Kabaira,
I already knew (I had but just arrived in New Britain from Eastern
Polynesia), was the 'furthest out' trading station on the great island,
which, at that time, had barely thirty white men living on it; most of
these were settled on Gazelle Peninsula, and a few on the Duke of York
Island, midway between the northern point of New Britain and mountainous
New Ireland. My nearest neighbour lived at Kabakada, a populous native
town ten miles away. My host told me that this man was 'a noisy, drunken
little swine,' the which assertion I subsequently found to be absolutely
correct. Further on, five miles from Kabakada, was another trader named
Bruno Ran, a hard-working Swiss; then, after rounding Cape Stephens,
was the large German trading station of Matupi in Blanche Bay, where you
could buy anything from a needle to a chain cable. On the Duke of York
Island was another trading station, and also the Wesleyan Mission, which
as yet had made but few converts in New Britain; and over in New Ireland
were a few scattered English traders, who sometimes sailed over on a
visit to their dangerously-situated fellow-countrymen in the big island.

For dangerous indeed was the daily existence of traders in those then
little-known islands. But money was to be made, and men will dare much
to make money quickly, even though at the risk of their lives. As for
the natives of New Britain, a few words will suffice. They were the most
unmitigated savages, cowardly and treacherous, and with the exception of
the people of the villages in the vicinity of Blanche Bay, whose women
wore a scanty girdle of leaves of the pla