第19章 MAUKI(6)

One morning Bunster got up in a mood for knocking seven bells out of the universe.He began on Mauki, and wound up on Mauki, in the interval knocking down his wife and hammering all the boat boys.At breakfast he called the coffee slops and threw the scalding contents of the cup into Mauki's face.By ten o'clock Bunster was shivering with ague, and half an hour later he was burning with fever.It was no ordinary attack.It quickly became pernicious, and developed into black-water fever.The days passed, and he grew weaker and weaker, never leaving his bed.Mauki waited and watched, the while his skin grew intact once more.He ordered the boys to beach the cutter, scrub her bottom, and give her a general overhauling.They thought the order emanated from Bunster, and they obeyed.But Bunster at the time was lying unconscious and giving no orders.This was Mauki's chance, but still he waited.

When the worst was past, and Bunster lay convalescent and conscious, but weak as a baby, Mauki packed his few trinkets, including the china cup handle, into his trade box.Then he went over to the village and interviewed the king and his two prime ministers.

"This fella Bunster, him good fella you like too much?" he asked.

They explained in one voice that they liked the trader not at all.The ministers poured forth a recital of all the indignities and wrongs that had been heaped upon them.The king broke down and wept.Mauki interrupted rudely.

"You savve me--me big fella marster my country.You no like m this fella white marster.Me no like m.Plenty good you put hundred cocoanut, two hundred cocoanut, three hundred cocoanut along cutter.Him finish, you go sleep m good fella.Altogether kanaka sleep m good fella.Bime by big fella noise along house, you no savve hear m that fella noise.You altogether sleep strong fella too much."In like manner Mauki interviewed the boat boys.Then he orderedBunster's wife to return to her family house.Had she refused, he would have been in a quandary, for his tambo would not have permitted him to lay hands on her.

The house deserted, he entered the sleeping room, where the trader lay in a doze.Mauki first removed the revolvers, then placed the ray fish mitten on his hand.Bunster's first warning was a stroke of the mitten that removed the skin the full length of his nose.

"Good fella, eh?" Mauki grinned, between two strokes, one of which swept the forehead bare and the other of which cleaned off one side of his face."Laugh, damn you, laugh."Mauki did his work throughly, and the kanakas, hiding in their houses, heard the "big fella noise" that Bunster made and continued to make for an hour or more.

When Mauki was done, he carried the boat compass and all the rifles and ammunition down to the cutter, which he proceeded to ballast with cases of tobacco.It was while engaged in this that a hideous, skinless thing came out of the house and ran screaming down the beach till it fell in the sand and mowed and gibbered under the scorching sun.Mauki looked toward it and hesitated.Then he went over and removed the head, which he wrapped in a mat and stowed in the stern locker of the cutter.

So soundly did the kanakas sleep through that long hot day that they did not see the cutter run out through the passage and head south, close- hauled on the southeast trade.Nor was the cutter ever sighted on that long tack to the shores of Ysabel, and during the tedious head-beat from there to Malaita.He landed at Port Adams with a wealth of rifles and tobacco such as no one man had ever possessed before.But he did not stop there.He had taken a white man's head, and only the bush could shelter him.So back he went to the bush villages, where he shot old Fanfoa and half a dozen of the chief men, and made himself the chief over all the villages.When his father died, Mauki's brother ruled in Port Adams, and joined together, salt-water men and bushmen, the resulting combination was the strongest of the ten score fighting tribes of Malaita.

More than his fear of the British government was Mauki's fear of the all-powerful Moongleam Soap Company; and one day a message came upto him in the bush, reminding him that he owed the Company eight and one-half years of labor.He sent back a favorable answer, and then appeared the inevitable white man, the captain of the schooner, the only white man during Mauki's reign, who ventured the bush and came out alive.This man not only came out, but he brought with him seven hundred and fifty dollars in gold sovereigns--the money price of eight years and a half of labor plus the cost price of certain rifles and cases of tobacco.Mauki no longer weighs one hundred and ten pounds.His stomach is three times its former girth, and he has four wives.He has many other things-- rifles and revolvers, the handle of a china cup, and an excellent collection of bushmen's heads.But more precious than the entire collection is another head, perfectly dried and cured, with sandy hair and a yellowish beard, which is kept wrapped in the finest of fibre lava-lavas.When Mauki goes to war with villages beyond his realm, he invariably gets out this head, and alone in his grass palace, contemplates it long and solemnly.At such times the hush of death falls on the village, and not even a pickaninny dares make a noise.The head is esteemed the most powerful devil-devil on Malaita, and to the possession of it is ascribed all of Mauki's greatness.