The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tapu Of Banderah, by Louis Becke

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Title: The Tapu Of Banderah
1901

Author: Louis Becke

Release Date: April 5, 2008 [EBook #24996]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAPU OF BANDERAH ***

Produced by David Widger

THE TAPU OF BANDERAH

By Louis Becke

C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.

1901

I ~ THE "STARLIGHT"

As the rising sun had just begun to pierce the misty tropic haze of
early dawn, a small, white-painted schooner of ninety or a hundred tons
burden was bearing down upon the low, densely-wooded island of Mayou,
which lies between the coast of south-east New Guinea and the murderous
Solomon Group--the grave of the white man in Melanesia.

The white population of Mayou was not large, for it consisted only of
an English missionary and his wife--who was, of course, a white woman--a
German trader named Peter Schwartzkoff and his native wife; an English
trader named Charlie Blount, with his two half-caste sons and daughters;
and an American trader and ex-whaler, named Nathaniel Burrowes, with his
wives.

Although the island is of large extent, and of amazing fertility, the
native population was at this time comparatively small, numbering only
some three thousand souls. They nearly all lived at the south-west end
of the island, the rendezvous of the few trading ships that visited the
place. Occasionally a surveying vessel, and, at longer intervals still,
a labour-recruiting ship from Hawaii or Fiji, would call. At such times
the monotony of the lives of the white residents of Mayou was pleasantly
broken. Once a year, too, a missionary vessel would drop anchor in the
little reef-bound port, but her visit was of moment only to the Rev. Mr.
Deighton, his wife, and their native converts, and the mission ship's
presence in the harbour was taken no notice of by the three white
traders; for a missionary ship is not always regarded by the average
trader in the South Seas as a welcome visitor.

Almost with the rising of the sun the vessel had been sighted from the
shore by a party of natives, who were fishing off the south end of the
island, an