head-beat from there to Malaita. He landed at Port Adams with a wealth
of rifles and tobacco such as no one man had ever possessed before.
But he did not stop there. He had taken a white man's head, and only
the bush could shelter him. So back he went to the bush villages,
where he shot old Fanfoa and half a dozen of the chief men, and made
himself the chief over all the villages. When his father died, Mauki's
brother ruled in Port Adams, and joined together, salt-water men and
bushmen, the resulting combination was the strongest of the ten score
fighting tribes of Malaita.

More than his fear of the British government was Mauki's fear of the
all-powerful Moongleam Soap Company; and one day a message came up to
him in the bush, reminding him that he owed the Company eight and
one-half years of labor. He sent back a favorable answer, and then
appeared the inevitable white man, the captain of the schooner, the
only white man during Mauki's reign, who ventured the bush and came
out alive. This man not only came out, but he brought with him seven
hundred and fifty dollars in gold sovereigns--the money price of eight
years and a half of labor plus the cost price of certain rifles and
cases of tobacco.

Mauki no longer weighs one hundred and ten pounds. His stomach is
three times its former girth, and he has four wives. He has many other
things--rifles and revolvers, the handle of a china cup, and an
excellent collection of bushmen's heads. But more precious than the
entire collection is another head, perfectly dried and cured, with
sandy hair and a yellowish beard, which is kept wrapped in the finest
of fibre lava-lavas. When Mauki goes to war with villages beyond his
realm, he invariably gets out this head, and alone in his grass
palace, contemplates it long and solemnly. At such times the hush of