A thousand deaths by Jack London

nor afraid.

“It would be an evil thing for you to kill me,” he told the man. “I have done

you no wrong, nor have I done the Buli wrong.”

So well did he cling to the neck of the one man that they dared not strike

with their clubs. And he continued to cling and to dispute for his life with

those who clamored for his death.

“I am John Starhurst,” he went on calmly. “I have labored in Fiji for three

years, and I have done it for no profit. I am here among you for good. Why

should any man kill me? To kill me will not profit any man.”

The Buli stole a look at the whale tooth. He was well paid for the deed.

The missionary was surrounded by a mass of naked savages, all struggling to

get at him. The death song, which is the song of the oven, was raised, and his

expostulations could no longer be heard. But so cunningly did he twine and

wreathe his body about his captor’s that the death blow could not be struck.

Erirola smiled, and the Buli grew angry.

“Away with you!” he cried. “A nice story to go back to the coast–a dozen of

SOUTH SEA TALES

25

you and one missionary, without weapons, weak as a woman, overcoming all of

you.”

“Wait, O Buli,” John Starhurst called out from the thick of the scuffle, “and

I will overcome even you. For my weapons are Truth and Right, and no man can

withstand them.”

“Come to me, then,” the Buli answered, “for my weapon is only a poor miserable

club, and, as you say, it cannot withstand you.”

The group separated from him, and John Starhurst stood alone, facing the Buli,

who was leaning on an enormous, knotted warclub.

“Come to me, missionary man, and overcome me,” the Buli challenged.

“Even so will I come to you and overcome you,” John Starhurst made answer,

first wiping his spectacles and settling them properly, then beginning his

advance.

The Buli raised the club and waited.

“In the first place, my death will profit you nothing,” began the argument.

“I leave the answer to my club,” was the Buli’s reply.

And to every point he made the same reply, at the same time watching the

missionary closely in order to forestall that cunning run-in under the lifted

club. Then, and for the first time, John Starhurst knew that his death was at

hand. He made no attempt to run in. Bareheaded, he stood in the sun and prayed

aloud–the mysterious figure of the inevitable white man, who, with Bible,

bullet, or rum bottle, has confronted the amazed savage in his every

stronghold. Even so stood John Starhurst in the rock fortress of the Buli of

Gatoka.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he prayed. “O Lord! Have mercy

upon Fiji. Have compasssion for Fiji. O Jehovah, hear us for His sake, Thy

Son, whom Thou didst give that through Him all men might also become Thy

children. From Thee we came, and our mind is that to Thee we may return. The

land is dark, O Lord, the land is dark. But Thou art mighty to save. Reach

out Thy hand, O Lord, and save Fiji, poor cannibal Fiji.”

The Buli grew impatient.

“Now will I answer thee,” he muttered, at the same time swinging his club with

both hands.

Narau, hiding among the women and the mats, heard the impact of the blow and

shuddered. Then the death song arose, and he knew his beloved missionary’s

body was being dragged to the oven as he heard the words:

“Drag me gently. Drag me gently.”

“For I am the champion of my land.”

SOUTH SEA TALES

26

“Give thanks! Give thanks! Give thanks!”

Next, a single voice arose out of the din, asking:

“Where is the brave man?”

A hundred voices bellowed the answer:

“Gone to be dragged into the oven and cooked.”

“Where is the coward?” the single voice demanded.

“Gone to report!” the hundred voices bellowed back. “Gone to report! Gone to

report!”

Narau groaned in anguish of spirit. The words of the old song were true. He

was the coward, and nothing remained to him but to go and report.

MAUKI

He weighed one hundred and ten pounds. His hair was kinky and negroid, and he

was black. He was peculiarly black. He was neither blue-black nor

purple-black, but plum-black. His name was Mauki, and he was the son of a

chief. He had three tambos. Tambo is Melanesian for taboo, and is first

cousin to that Polynesian word. Mauki’s three tambos were as follows: First,

he must never shake hands with a woman, nor have a woman’s hand touch him or

any of his personal belongings; secondly, he must never eat clams nor any food

from a fire in which clams had been cooked; thirdly, he must never touch a

crocodile, nor travel in a canoe that carried any part of a crocodile even if

as large as a tooth.

Of a different black were his teeeth, which were deep black, or, perhaps

better, LAMP-black. They had been made so in a single night, by his mother,

who had compressed about them a powdered mineral which was dug from the

landslide back of Port Adams. Port Adams is a salt-water village on Malaita,

and Malaita is the most savage island in the Solomons–so savage that no

traders or planters have yet gained a foothold on it; while, from the time of

the earliest bˆche-de-mer fishers and sandalwood traders down to the latest

labor recruiters equipped with automatic rifles and gasolene engines, scores

of white adventurers have been passed out by tomahawks and soft-nosed Snider

bullets. So Malaita remains today, in the twentieth century, the stamping

ground of the labor recruiters, who farm its coasts for laborers who engage

and contract themselves to toil on the plantations of the neighboring and more

civilized islands for a wage of thirty dollars a year. The natives of those

neighboring and more civilized islands have themselves become too civilized to

work on plantations.

Mauki’s ears were pierced, not in one place, nor two places, but in a couple

of dozen places. In one of the smaller holes he carried a clay pipe. The

larger holes were too large for such use. The bowl of the pipe would have

SOUTH SEA TALES

27

fallen through. In fact, in the largest hole in each ear he habitually wore

round wooden plugs that were an even four inches in diameter. Roughly

speaking, the circumference of said holes was twelve and one-half inches.

Mauki was catholic in his tastes. In the various smaller holes he carried such

things as empty rifle cartridges, horseshoe nails, copper screws, pieces of

string, braids of sennit, strips of green leaf, and, in the cool of the day,

scarlet hibiscus flowers. From which it will be seen that pockets were not

necessary to his well-being. Besides, pockets were impossible, for his only

wearing apparel consisted of a piece of calico several inches wide. A pocket

knife he wore in his hair, the blade snapped down on a kinky lock. His most

prized possession was the handle of a china cup, which he suspended from a

ring of turtle-shell, which, in turn, was passed through the

partition-cartilage of his nose.

But in spite of embellishments, Mauki had a nice face. It was really a pretty

face, viewed by any standard, and for a Melanesian it was a remarkably

good-looking face. Its one fault was its lack of strength. It was softly

effeminate, almost girlish. The features were small, regular, and delicate.

The chin was weak, and the mouth was weak. There was no strength nor character

in the jaws, forehead, and nose. In the eyes only could be caught any hint of

the unknown quantities that were so large a part of his make-up and that other

persons could not understand. These unknown quantities were pluck,

pertinacity, fearlessness, imagination, and cunning; and when they found

expression in some consistent and striking action, those about him were

astounded.

Mauki’s father was chief over the village at Port Adams, and thus, by birth a

salt-water man, Mauki was half amphibian. He knew the way of the fishes and

oysters, and the reef was an open book to him. Canoes, also, he knew. He

learned to swim when he was a year old. At seven years he could hold his

breath a full minute and swim straight down to bottom through thirty feet of

water. And at seven years he was stolen by the bushmen, who cannot even swim

and who are afraid of salt water. Thereafter Mauki saw the sea only from a

distance, through rifts in the jungle and from open spaces on the high

mountain sides. He became the slave of old Fanfoa, head chief over a score of

scattered bush-villages on the range-lips of Malaita, the smoke of which, on