"My word, King o' Babylon," he muttered in the chief's ears as the
boat's crew bent to the oars, "one fella boy make 'm trouble, I

shoot 'm hell outa you first thing. Next thing I shoot 'm hell outa
Langa-Langa. All the time you me fella walk about, you walk about

along me. You no like walk about along me, you finish close up
altogether."

And ashore, a white man alone, attended by an Irish terrier puppy
with a heart flooded with love and by a black king resentfully

respectful of the dynamite of the white man, Van Horn went,
swashbuckling barelegged through a stronghold of three thousand

souls, while his white mate, addicted to schnapps, held the deck of
the tiny craft at anchor off shore, and while his black boat's crew,

oars in hands, held the whaleboat stern-on to the beach to receive
the expected flying leap of the man they served but did not love,

and whose head they would eagerly take any time were it not for fear
of him.

Van Horn had had no intention of going ashore, and that he went
ashore at the black chief's insolentchallenge was merely a matter

of business. For an hour he strolled about, his right hand never
far from the butt of the automatic that lay along his groin, his

eyes never too far from the unwilling Nau-hau beside him. For Nau-
hau, in sullenvolcanic rage, was ripe to erupt at the slightest

opportunity. And, so strolling, Van Horn was given to see what few
white men have seen, for Langa-Langa and her sister islets,

beautiful beads strung along the lee coast of Malaita, were as
unique as they were unexplored.

Originally these islets had been mere sand-banks and coral reefs
awash in the sea or shallowly covered by the sea. Only a hunted,

wretched creature, enduringincrediblehardship, could have eked out
a miserableexistence upon them. But such hunted, wretched

creatures, survivors of village massacres, escapes from the wrath of
chiefs and from the long-pig fate of the cooking-pot, did come, and

did endure. They, who knew only the bush, learned the salt water
and developed the salt-water-man breed. They learned the ways of

the fish and the shell-fish, and they invented hooks and lines, nets
and fish-traps, and all the diversecunning ways by which swimming

meat can be garnered from the shifting, unstable sea.
Such refugees stole women from the mainland, and increased and

multiplied. With herculean labour, under the burning sun, they
conquered the sea. They walled the confines of their coral reefs

and sand-banks with coral-rock stolen from the mainland on dark
nights. Fine masonry, without mortar or cutting chisel, they

builded to withstand the ocean surge. Likewise stolen from the
mainland, as mice steal from human habitations when humans sleep,

they stole canoe-loads, and millions of canoe-loads, of fat, rich
soil.

Generations and centuries passed, and, behold, in place of naked
sandbanks half awash were walled citadels, perforated with

launching-ways for the long canoes, protected against the mainland
by the lagoons that were to them their narrow seas. Coconut palms,

banana trees, and lofty breadfruit trees gave food and sun-shelter.
Their gardens prospered. Their long, lean war-canoes ravaged the

coasts and visited vengeance for their forefathers upon the
descendants of them that had persecuted and desired to eat.

Like the refugees and renegades who slunk away in the salt marshes
of the Adriatic and builded the palaces of powerful Venice on her

deep-sunk piles, so these wretched hunted blacks builded power until
they became masters of the mainland, controlling traffic and trade-

routes, compelling the bushmen for ever after to remain in the bush
and never to dare attempt the salt-water.

And here, amidst the fat success and insolence of the sea-people,
Van Horn swaggered his way, taking his chance, incapable of

believing that he might swiftly die, knowing that he was building
good future business in the matter of recruiting labour for the

plantations of other adventuring white men on far islands who dared
only less greatly than he.

And when, at the end of an hour, Van Horn passed Jerry into the
sternsheets of the whaleboat and followed, he left on the beach a

stunned and wondering royal black, who, more than ever before, was
respectful of the dynamite-compounded white men who brought to him

stick tobacco, calico, knives and hatchets, and inexorably extracted
from such trade a profit.

CHAPTER XI
Back on board, Van Horn immediately hove short, hoisted sail, broke

out the anchor, and filled away for the ten-mile beat up the lagoon
to windward that would fetch Somo. On the way, he stopped at Binu

to greet Chief Johnny and land a few Binu returns. Then it was on
to Somo, and to the end of voyaging for ever of the Arangi and of

many that were aboard of her.
Quite the opposite to his treatment at Langa-Langa was that accorded

Van Horn at Somo. Once the return boys were put ashore, and this
was accomplished no later than three-thirty in the afternoon, he

invited Chief Bashti on board. And Chief Bashti came, very nimble
and active despite his great age, and very good-natured--so good-

natured, in fact, that he insisted on bringing three of his elderly
wives on board with him. This was unprecedented. Never had he

permitted any of his wives to appear before a white man, and Van
Horn felt so honoured that he presented each of them with a gay clay

pipe and a dozen sticks of tobacco.
Late as the afternoon was, trade was brisk, and Bashti, who had

taken the lion's share of the wages due to the fathers of two boys
who had died, bought liberally of the Arangi's stock. When Bashti

promised plenty of fresh recruits, Van Horn, used to the
changeableness of the savage mind, urged signing them up right away.

Bashti demurred, and suggested next day. Van Horn insisted that
there was no time like the present, and so well did he insist that

the old chief sent a canoe ashore to round up the boys who had been
selected to go away to the plantations.

"Now, what do you think?" Van Horn asked of Borckman, whose eyes
were remarkably fishy. "I never saw the old rascal so friendly.

Has he got something up his sleeve?"
The mate stared at the many canoes alongside, noted the numbers of

women in them, and shook his head.
"When they're starting anything they always send the Marys into the

bush," he said.
"You never can tell about these niggers," the captain grumbled.

"They may be short on imagination, but once in a while they do
figure out something new. Now Bashti's the smartest old nigger I've

ever seen. What's to prevent his figuring out that very bet and
playing it in reverse? Just because they've never had their women

around when trouble was on the carpet is no reason that they will
always keep that practice."

"Not even Bashti's got the savvee to pull a trick like that,"
Borckman objected. "He's just feeling good and liberal. Why, he's

bought forty pounds of goods from you already. That's why he wants
to sign on a new batch of boys with us, and I'll bet he's hoping

half of them die so's he can have the spending of their wages."
All of which was most reasonable. Nevertheless, Van Horn shook his

head.
"All the same keep your eyes sharp on everything," he cautioned.

"And remember, the two of us mustn't ever be below at the same time.
And no more schnapps, mind, until we're clear of the whole kit and

caboodle."
Bashti was incredibly lean and prodigiously old. He did not know

how old he was himself, although he did know that no person in his
tribe had been alive when he was a young boy in the village. He

remembered the days when some of the old men, still alive, had been
born; and, unlike him, they were now decrepit, shaken with palsy,

blear-eyed, toothless of mouth, deaf of ear, or paralysed. All his
own faculties remained unimpaired. He even boasted a dozen worn