It was the last straw.Every one on the Snark had been afflicted except her.I had thought that I was going to lose my foot at the ankle by one exceptionally malignant boring ulcer.Henry and Tehei, the Tahitian sailors, had had numbers of them.Wada had been able to count his by the score.Nakata had had single ones three inches in length.Martin had been quite certain that necrosis of his shinbone had set in from the roots of the amazing colony he elected to cultivate in that locality.But Charmian had escaped.Out of her long immunity had been bred contempt for the rest of us.Her ego was flattered to such an extent that one day she shyly informed me that it was all a matter of pureness of blood.Since all the rest of us cultivated the sores, and since she did not--well, anyway, hers was the size of a silver dollar, and the pureness of her blood enabled her to cure it after several weeks of strenuous nursing.She pins her faith to corrosive sublimate.Martin swears by iodoform.Henry uses lime-juice undiluted.And I believe that when corrosive sublimate is slow in taking hold, alternate dressings of peroxide of hydrogen are just the thing.There are white men in the Solomons who stake all upon boracic acid, and others who are prejudiced in favour of lysol.I also have the weakness of a panacea.It is California.I defy any man to get a Solomon Island sore in California.
We ran down the lagoon from Langa Langa, between mangrove swamps, through passages scarcely wider than the Minota, and past the reef villages of Kaloka and Auki.Like the founders of Venice, these salt-water men were originally refugees from the mainland.Too weak to hold their own in the bush, survivors of village massacres, they fled to the sand-banks of the lagoon.These sand-banks they built up into islands.They were compelled to seek their provender from the sea, and in time they became salt-water men.They learned the ways of the fish and the shellfish, and they invented hooks and lines, nets and fish-traps.They developed canoe-bodies.Unable to walk about, spending all their time in the canoes, they became thick-armed and broad-shouldered, with narrow waists and frail spindly legs.Controlling the sea-coast, they became wealthy, trade with the interior passing largely through their hands.But perpetual enmity exists between them and the bushmen.Practically their only truces are on market-days, which occur at stated intervals, usually twice a week.The bushwomen and the salt-water women do the bartering.Back in the bush, a hundred yards away, fully armed, lurk the bushmen, while to seaward, in the canoes, are the salt-water men.There are very rare instances of the market-day truces being broken.The bushmen like their fish too well, while the salt-water men have an organic craving for the vegetables they cannot grow on their crowded islets.
Thirty miles from Langa Langa brought us to the passage between Bassakanna Island and the mainland.Here, at nightfall, the wind left us, and all night, with the whale-boat towing ahead and the crew on board sweating at the sweeps, we strove to win through.But the tide was against us.At midnight, midway in the passage, we came up with the Eugenie, a big recruiting schooner, towing with two whale-boats.Her skipper, Captain Keller, a sturdy young German of twenty-two, came on board for a "gam," and the latest news of Malaita was swapped back and forth.He had been in luck, having gathered in twenty recruits at the village of Fiu.While lying there, one of the customary courageous killings had taken place.
The murdered boy was what is called a salt-water bushman--that is, a salt-water man who is half bushman and who lives by the sea but does not live on an islet.Three bushmen came down to this man where he was working in his garden.They behaved in friendly fashion, and after a time suggested kai-kai.Kai-kai means food.He built a fire and started to boil some taro.While bending over the pot, one of the bushmen shot him through the head.He fell into the flames, whereupon they thrust a spear through his stomach, turned it around, and broke it off.
"My word," said Captain Keller, "I don't want ever to be shot with a Snider.Spread! You could drive a horse and carriage through that hole in his head."Another recent courageous killing I heard of on Malaita was that of an old man.A bush chief had died a natural death.Now the bushmen don't believe in natural deaths.No one was ever known to die a natural death.The only way to die is by bullet, tomahawk, or spear thrust.When a man dies in any other way, it is a clear case of having been charmed to death.When the bush chief died naturally, his tribe placed the guilt on a certain family.Since it did not matter which one of the family was killed, they selected this old man who lived by himself.This would make it easy.Furthermore, he possessed no Snider.Also, he was blind.The old fellow got an inkling of what was coming and laid in a large supply of arrows.
Three brave warriors, each with a Snider, came down upon him in the night time.All night they fought valiantly with him.Whenever they moved in the bush and made a noise or a rustle, he discharged an arrow in that direction.In the morning, when his last arrow was gone, the three heroes crept up to him and blew his brains out.
Morning found us still vainly toiling through the passage.At last, in despair, we turned tail, ran out to sea, and sailed clear round Bassakanna to our objective, Malu.The anchorage at Malu was very good, but it lay between the shore and an ugly reef, and while easy to enter, it was difficult to leave.The direction of the southeast trade necessitated a beat to windward; the point of the reef was widespread and shallow; while a current bore down at all times upon the point.
