bullet through both hips.
Then it was that Mr. Haveby sent Bunster to Lord Howe, the falling-off place.
He celebrated his landing by mopping up half a case of gin and by thrashing
the elderly and wheezy mate of the schooner which had brought him. When the
schooner departed, he called the kanakas down to the beach and challenged them
to throw him in a wrestling bout, promising a case of tobacco to the one who
succeeded. Three kanakas he threw, but was promptly thrown by a fourth, who,
instead of receiving the tobacco, got a bullet through his lungs.
And so began Bunster’s reign on Lord Howe. Three thousand people lived in the
principal village; but it was deserted, even in broad day, when he passed
through. Men, women, and children fled before him. Even the dogs and pigs got
out of the way, while the king was not above hiding under a mat. The two prime
ministers lived in terror of Bunster, who never discussed any moot subject,
but struck out with his fists instead.
And to Lord Howe came Mauki, to toil for Bunster for eight long years and a
half. There was no escaping from Lord Howe. For better or worse, Bunster and
he were tied together. Bunster weighed two hundred pounds. Mauki weighed one
hundred and ten. Bunster was a degenerate brute. But Mauki was a primitive
savage. While both had wills and ways of their own.
Mauki had no idea of the sort of master he was to work for. He had had no
warnings, and he had concluded as a matter of course that Bunster would be
like other white men, a drinker of much whiskey, a ruler and a lawgiver who
always kept his word and who never struck a boy undeserved. Bunster had the
advantage. He knew all about Mauki, and gloated over the coming into
possession of him. The last cook was suffering from a broken arm and a
dislocated shoulder, so Bunster made Mauki cook and general house-boy.
And Mauki soon learned that there were white men and white men. On the very
day the schooner departed he was ordered to buy a chicken from Samisee, the
native Tongan missionary. But Samisee had sailed across the lagoon and would
not be back for three days. Mauki returned with the information. He climbed
the steep stairway (the house stood on piles twelve feet above the sand), and
entered the living room to report. The trader demanded the chicken. Mauki
opened his mouth to explain the missionary’s absence. But Bunster did not care
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33
for explanations. He struck out with his fist. The blow caught Mauki on the
mouth and lifted him into the air. Clear through the doorway he flew, across
the narrow veranda, breaking the top railing, and down to the ground.
His lips were a contused, shapeless mass, and his mouth was full of blood and
broken teeth.
“That’ll teach you that back talk don’t go with me,” the trader shouted,
purple with rage, peering down at him over the broken railing.
Mauki had never met a white man like this, and he resolved to walk small and
never offend. He saw the boat boys knocked about, and one of them put in irons
for three days with nothing to eat for the crime of breaking a rowlock while
pulling. Then, too, he heard the gossip of the village and learned why Bunster
had taken a third wife–by force, as was well known. The first and second
wives lay in the graveyard, under the white coral sand, with slabs of coral
rock at head and feet. They had died, it was said, from beatings he had given
them. The third wife was certainly ill-used, as Mauki could see for himself.
But there was no way by which to avoid offending the white man who seemed
offended with life. When Mauki kept silent, he was struck and called a sullen
brute. When he spoke, he was struck for giving back talk. When he was grave,
Bunster accused him of plotting and gave him a thrashing in advance; and when
he strove to be cheerful and to smile, he was charged with sneering at his
lord and master and given a taste of stick. Bunster was a devil.
The village would have done for him, had it not remembered the lesson of the
three schooners. It might have done for him anyway, if there had been a bush
to which to flee. As it was, the murder of the white men, of any white man,
would bring a man-of-war that would kill the offenders and chop down the
precious cocoanut trees. Then there were the boat boys, with minds fully made
up to drown him by accident at the first opportunity to capsize the cutter.
Only Bunster saw to it that the boat did not capsize.
Mauki was of a different breed, and escape being impossible while Bunster
lived, he was resolved to get the white man. The trouble was that he could
never find a chance. Bunster was always on guard. Day and night his revolvers
were ready to hand. He permitted nobody to pass behind his back, as Mauki
learned after having been knocked down several times. Bunster knew that he had
more to fear from the good-natured, even sweet-faced, Malaita boy than from
the entire population of Lord Howe; and it gave added zest to the programme of
torment he was carrying out. And Mauki walked small, accepted his punishments,
and waited.
All other white men had respected his tambos, but not so Bunster.
Mauki’s weekly allowance of tobacco was two sticks. Bunster passed them to his
woman and ordered Mauki to receive them from her hand. But this could not be,
and Mauki went without his tobacco. In the same way he was made to miss many a
meal, and to go hungry many a day. He was ordered to make chowder out of the
big clams that grew in the lagoon. This he could not do, for clams were tambo.
Six times in succession he refused to touch the clams, and six times he was
knocked senseless. Bunster knew that the boy would die first, but called his
SOUTH SEA TALES
34
refusal mutiny, and would have killed him had there been another cook to take
his place.
One of the trader’s favorite tricks was to catch Mauki’s kinky locks and bat
his head against the wall. Another trick was to catch Mauki unawares and
thrust the live end of a cigar against his flesh. This Bunster called
vaccination, and Mauki was vaccinated a number of times a week. Once, in a
rage, Bunster ripped the cup handle from Mauki’s nose, tearing the hole clear
out of the cartilage.
“Oh, what a mug!” was his comment, when he surveyed the damage he had wrought.
The skin of a shark is like sandpaper, but the skin of a ray fish is like a
rasp. In the South Seas the natives use it as a wood file in smoothing down
canoes and paddles. Bunster had a mitten made of ray fish skin. The first time
he tried it on Mauki, with one sweep of the hand it fetched the skin off his
back from neck to armpit. Bunster was delighted. He gave his wife a taste of
the mitten, and tried it out thoroughly on the boat boys. The prime ministers
came in for a stroke each, and they had to grin and take it for a joke.
“Laugh, damn you, laugh!” was the cue he gave.
Mauki came in for the largest share of the mitten. Never a day passed without
a caress from it. There were times when the loss of so much cuticle kept him
awake at night, and often the half-healed surface was raked raw afresh by the
facetious Mr. Bunster. Mauki continued his patient wait, secure in the
knowledge that sooner or later his time would come. And he knew just what he
was going to do, down to the smallest detail, when the time did come.
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