"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