who knocked seven bells out of the three runaways, tied them like
pigs, and tossed them into the whale boat. But the man in whose house
they had hidden--seven times seven bells must have been knocked out of
him from the way the hair, skin, and teeth flew, and he was
discouraged for the rest of his natural life from harboring runaway
laborers.

For a year Mauki toiled on. Then he was made a house-boy, and had good
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