登陆注册
5605000000016

第16章 MAUKI(3)

For a year Mauki toiled on.Then he was made a house-boy, and hadgood food and easy times, with light work in keeping the house clean and serving the white men with whiskey and beer at all hours of the day and most hours of the night.He liked it, but he liked Port Adams more.He had two years longer to serve, but two years were too long for him in the throes of homesickness.He had grown wiser with his year of service, and, being now a house-boy, he had opportunity.He had the cleaning of the rifles, and he knew where the key to the store room was hung.He planned to escape, and one night ten Malaita boys and one boy from San Cristoval sneaked from the barracks and dragged one of the whale boats down to the beach.It was Mauki who supplied the key that opened the padlock on the boat, and it was Mauki who equipped the boat with a dozen Winchesters, an immense amount of ammunition, a case of dynamite with detonators and fuse, and ten cases of tobacco.

The northwest monsoon was blowing, and they fled south in the night time, hiding by day on detached and uninhabited islets, or dragging their whale boat into the bush on the large islands.Thus they gained Guadalcanar, skirted halfway along it, and crossed the Indispensable Straits to Florida Island.It was here that they killed the San Cristoval boy, saving his head and cooking and eating the rest of him.The Malaita coast was only twenty miles away, but the last night a strong current and baffling winds prevented them from gaining across.Daylight found them still several miles from their goal.But daylight brought a cutter, in which were two white men, who were not afraid of eleven Malaita men armed with twelve rifles.Mauki and his companions were carried back to Tulagi, where lived the great white master of all the white men.And the great white master held a court, after which, one by one, the runaways were tied up and given twenty lashes each, and sentenced to a fine of fifteen dollars.They were sent back to New Georgia, where the white men knocked seven bells out of them all around and put them to work.But Mauki was no longer house-boy.He was put in the road-making gang.The fine of fifteen dollars had been paid by the white men from whom he had run away, and he was told that he would have to work it out, which meant six months' additional toil.Further, his share of the stolen tobacco earned him another year of toil.

Port Adams was now three years and a half away, so he stole a canoe one night, hid on the islets in Manning Straits, passed through the Straits, and began working along the eastern coast of Ysabel, only to be captured, two-thirds of the way along, by the white men on Meringe Lagoon.After a week, he escaped from them and took to the bush.There were no bush natives on Ysabel, only salt-water men, who were all Christians.The white men put up a reward of five-hundred sticks of tobacco, and every time Mauki ventured down to the sea to steal a canoe he was chased by the salt- water men.Four months of this passed, when, the reward having been raised to a thousand sticks, he was caught and sent back to New Georgia and the road-building gang.Now a thousand sticks are worth fifty dollars, and Mauki had to pay the reward himself, which required a year and eight months' labor.So Port Adams was now five years away.

His homesickness was greater than ever, and it did not appeal to him to settle down and be good, work out his four years, and go home.The next time, he was caught in the very act of running away.His case was brought before Mr.Haveby, the island manager of the Moongleam Soap Company, who adjudged him an incorrigible.The Company had plantations on the Santa Cruz Islands, hundreds of miles across the sea, and there it sent its Solomon Islands' incorrigibles.And there Mauki was sent, though he never arrived.The schooner stopped at Santa Anna, and in the night Mauki swam ashore, where he stole two rifles and a case of tobacco from the trader and got away in a canoe to Cristoval.Malaita was now to the north, fifty or sixty miles away.But when he attempted the passage, he was caught by a light gale and driven back to Santa Anna, where the trader clapped him in irons and held him against the return of the schooner from Santa Cruz.The two rifles the trader recovered, but the case of tobacco was charged up to Mauki at the rate of another year.The sum of years he now owed the Company was six.

On the way back to New Georgia, the schooner dropped anchor in Marau Sound, which lies at the southeastern extremity of Guadalcanar.Mauki swam ashore with handcuffs on his wrists and got away to the bush.The schooner went on, but the Moongleam trader ashore offered a thousand sticks, and to him Mauki was brought by the bushmen with ayear and eight months tacked on to his account.Again, and before the schooner called in, he got away, this time in a whale boat accompanied by a case of the trader's tobacco.But a northwest gale wrecked him upon Ugi, where the Christian natives stole his tobacco and turned him over to the Moongleam trader who resided there.The tobacco the natives stole meant another year for him, and the tale was now eight years and a half.

"We'll send him to Lord Howe," said Mr.Haveby."Bunster is there, and we'll let them settle it between them.It will be a case, I imagine, of Mauki getting Bunster, or Bunster getting Mauki, and good riddance in either event."If one leaves Meringe Lagoon, on Ysabel, and steers a course due north, magnetic, at the end of one hundred and fifty miles he will lift the pounded coral beaches of Lord Howe above the sea.Lord Howe is a ring of land some one hundred and fifty miles in circumference, several hundred yards wide at its widest, and towering in places to a height of ten feet above sea level.Inside this ring of sand is a mighty lagoon studded with coral patches.Lord Howe belongs to the Solomons neither geographically nor ethnologically.It is an atoll, while the Solomons are high islands; and its people and language are Polynesian, while the inhabitants of the Solomons are Melanesian.

同类推荐
  • 华严一乘教义分齐章义苑疏

    华严一乘教义分齐章义苑疏

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 玉照新志

    玉照新志

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 晋政辑要

    晋政辑要

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 两卷无量寿经宗要

    两卷无量寿经宗要

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 沙弥十戒威仪录要

    沙弥十戒威仪录要

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 凡世歌

    凡世歌

    凡世沉浮,仗剑而舞;我辈擎乾坤,我辈狂如歌。*******愿解腰间三尺剑,直问何处斩蛟龙*****
  • 关于青春那件小事

    关于青春那件小事

    最美的我们,在最美的年纪遇见最美的你。加油
  • 阴阳天主

    阴阳天主

    三十六天界,一界一天主。当阴阳天之主因为一次意外来到无神大陆,且看他带着如何成长蜕变,傲战九天!绝世天才又如何?国色圣女又怎样?于我面前,都是我的垫脚石!
  • 追妻无门:女boss不好惹

    追妻无门:女boss不好惹

    青涩蜕变,如今她是能独当一面的女boss,爱了冷泽聿七年,也同样花了七年时间去忘记他。以为是陌路,他突然向他表白,扬言要娶她,她只当他是脑子抽风,他的殷勤她也全都无视。他帮她查她父母的死因,赶走身边情敌,解释当初拒绝她的告别,和故意对她冷漠都是无奈之举。突然爆出她父母的死居然和冷家有丝毫联系,还莫名跳出个公爵未婚夫,扬言要与她履行婚约。峰回路转,破镜还能重圆吗? PS:我又开新文了,每逢假期必书荒,新文《有你的世界遇到爱》,喜欢我的文的朋友可以来看看,这是重生类现言,对这个题材感兴趣的一定要收藏起来。
  • 孔子集语

    孔子集语

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 太上召诸龙神安镇坟墓经

    太上召诸龙神安镇坟墓经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 追妻999次

    追妻999次

    不知道是倒霉还是幸运,刚失恋,在酒吧上就遇到了一个温柔的美少男,本以为桃花运来了,却不料,新上任的总裁,就是他,激动的上前打招呼,却被一脚踹开了,“滚——”谁能告诉他,为什么那个温柔的美少男,一下子变成了一个暴君?
  • 封妖引

    封妖引

    神掌万物,由于对比冥魔妖几族人族简直脆弱不堪,神降下神之子,身赋魂引之力,觉醒第七魂,帮助人类获得诛魔封妖除鬼的力量。身具魂引之力的少年,一朝觉醒,七魂现世,以往的平静全部打碎,恶鬼遍地,妖怪纵横,他该如何选择?所谓的仙门,道门,真的是为他好吗?神之子真的是神眷吗?魂引的背后藏着什么秘密?当得知一切真像后,他又会有怎样的结局?追寻千年足迹,辗转几世轮回,魅惑的紫金双瞳,九尾妖身摄人!这一次,她,一定要护他周全!呵!九尾天狐么?她可没有这么简单!终有一天,她会让害她的,伤他的,全部付出代价已经两世错过,这一次,她绝不会再错!彼岸花庞,孟婆汤莫喝,黄泉路慢走,等我(甜虐各半,一对一)
  • 哈佛经营管理学(上)

    哈佛经营管理学(上)

    哈佛商学院在近百年的辉煌历史中,向社会输送了大批优秀的工商管理人才,他们已成为世界工商界的巨头和中坚,为美国及世界经济的发展和社会的繁荣进步,作出了重大的贡献。也正因为如此,哈佛的经营管理学成了人们追踪的热门课题,特别是近几年来,美国政经界名人、商界弄潮儿纷纷前往哈佛进修深造。以期从中了解工商管理的真谛,深刻理解哈佛经营奇迹的不解之谜。本书不但生动地描述了哈佛商学院鲜为人知的学习和生活环境,而且介绍了哈佛经营的特殊精神和管理的特殊方法,向人们展示了哈佛经营管理这一不朽的精神食粮。
  • 总裁的胆小鬼

    总裁的胆小鬼

    总裁狂吐血发誓,一定要让这个小女人收回他不是男人的话.加油.号外:总裁后又开丫环系列,敬请关注,直接点下面的连接就可进入,更多精采不容错过