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 teeth, 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 bêche-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 fallen through. In fact, in the largest hole in each
ear he habitually wore round wooden plugs that were an even four