see it my way. Then they made me
a litter of poles and carried me down to the station. Mr. Tarleton set
my leg, and made a regular missionary splice of it, so that I limp to
this day. That done, he took down my evidence, and Uma's, and Maea's,
wrote it all out fine, and had us sign it; and then he got the chiefs
and marched over to Papa Randall's to seize Case's papers.

All they found was a bit of a diary, kept for a good many years, and all
about the price of copra, and chickens being stolen, and that; and the
books of the business and the will I told you of in the beginning, by
both of which the whole thing (stock, lock, and barrel) appeared to
belong to the Samoa woman. It was I that bought her out at a mighty
reasonable figure, for she was in a hurry to get home. As for Randall
and the black, they had to tramp; got into some kind of a station on the
Papa-malulu side; did very bad business, for the truth is neither of the
pair was fit for it, and lived mostly on fish, which was the means of
Randall's death. It seems there was a nice shoal in one day, and Papa
went after them with the dynamite; either the match burned too fast, or
Papa was full, or both, but the shell went off (in the usual way) before
he threw it, and where was Papa's hand? Well, there's nothing to hurt in
that; the islands up north are all full of one-handed men, like the
parties in the "Arabian Nights"; but either Randall was too old, or he
drank too much, and the short and the long of it was that he died.
Pretty soon after, the nigger was turned out of the island for stealing
from white men, and went off to the west, where he found men of his own
colour, in case he liked that, and the men of his own colour took and
ate him at some kind of a corroborree, and I'm sure I hope he was to
their fancy!

So there was I, left alone in my glory at Falesa; and when the schooner
came round I filled her up, and gave her a deck-cargo half as high as
the house. I must say Mr. Tarleton did the right thing by us; but he
took a meanish kind of a revenge.

"Now, Mr. Wiltshire," said he, "I've put you all square with everybody
here. It wasn't difficult to do, Case being gone; but I have done it,
and given my pledge besides that you will deal fairly with the natives.
I must ask you to keep my word."

Well, so I did. I used to be bothered about my balances, but I reasoned
it out this way: We all have queerish balances, and the natives all know
it, and water their