chor on the
other side, abreast of the village.

My reasons for wishing to avoid coming in contact with the people were
shared by my companions, and were based on good grounds.

The ruler of Apamama, King Apinoka, was, although quite a young man, the
most powerful and most dreaded of all the chiefs of the islands of the
mid-Pacific, and he boasted that in time he would crush out and utterly
exterminate the inhabitants of the surrounding islands unless they
submitted to him, and for years past had been steadily buying arms of
the best quality. He had in his employ several white men, one of whom
was his secretary, another was a sort of military instructor, and a
third commanded a small but well-armed schooner, and it was his (the
king's) ambition to possess a steamer, so that he could more easily and
expeditiously set out on his career of conquest. The revenue he derived
was a very large one, for the island contained hundreds of thousands
of coco-nut trees, and all day long, from morn till night, his subjects
were employed in turning the nuts into oil or copra, which he sold to
trading vessels. A thorough savage, though he affected European dress
at times, he ruled with a rod of iron, and he had committed an appalling
number of murders, exercising his power and his love of bloodshed in
a truly horrifying manner. For instance, if one of his slaves offended
him, he would have the man brought before him and order him to climb
a very tall coco-nut tree which grew in front of the king's house and
throw himself down. If the poor wretch hesitated, Apinoka would then
and there shoot him dead; if he obeyed, and threw himself down, he
was equally as certain to be killed by the fall--sixty feet or more.
Wherever he went he was surrounded by his bodyguard, and his haughty and
domineering disposition was a general theme among the white traders of
the Pacific Islands. To those captains who supplied him with firearms
he was liberal to lavishness in the favours he conferred; to any who
crossed him or declined to pander to him, he would be grossly insulting,
and forbid them to ever come into the lagoon again.

His house was a huge affair, and contained an extraordinary medley of
articles--European furniture, sewing machines, barrel organs, brass
cannon and cannon-balls, cuckoo clocks, bayonets, cutlasses, rifles,
cases and casks of liquor, from Hollands gin to champagne, and fiery
Fiji rum to the best old French brandy. His harem consis