find out for sure. Just you waltz in and talk to Papa."

"Thank you," I said, "I'd rather stay right out here on the
verandah. Your house is so close."

"I'll call Papa out here, then," says he.

"My dear fellow," I says, "I wish you wouldn't. The fact is, I
don't take to Mr. Randall."

Case laughed, took a lantern from the store, and set out into the
village. He was gone perhaps a quarter of an hour, and he looked
mighty serious when he came back.

"Well," said he, clapping down the lantern on the verandah steps,
"I would never have believed it. I don't know where the impudence
of these Kanakas 'll go next; they seem to have lost all idea of
respect for whites. What we want is a man-of-war - a German, if we
could - they know how to manage Kanakas."

"I AM tabooed, then?" I cried.

"Something of the sort," said he. "It's the worst thing of the
kind I've heard of yet. But I'll stand by you, Wiltshire, man to
man. You come round here to-morrow about nine, and we'll have it
out with the chiefs. They're afraid of me, or they used to be; but
their heads are so big by now, I don't know what to think.
Understand me, Wiltshire; I don't count this your quarrel," he went
on, with a great deal of resolution, "I count it all of our
quarrel, I count it the White Man's Quarrel, and I'll stand to it