id, "I feel more at ease now, so will you
kindly tell me the object of your visit?"

"I've come to get that swine Tematau. I pay him. He is my man. I shall
tolerate no interference. I shall take him back to Taritai" (the name
of the village where he lived) "if I have to fight my way out of this
village of yours and kill fifty of your niggers."

"Steady yourself, Mr. Krause, and don't say 'your niggers' so
emphatically. In the first place I have but two native servants, not
fifty, but either of those two would very much resent your calling him a
'nigger.' You know as well as I do that to call a native of this island,
or of any other island of the group, a nigger, is so grossly insulting
that his knife would be out in an instant."

"Ah, you and I have different ideas on the subject," he said sneeringly;
"but that does not matter to me at the moment. My paid servant has
absconded from my service, and I have come to get him. That is plain
enough, isn't it?"

"Quite. But I am an Englishman, Mr. Krause, and not to be easily bluffed
because a man comes stamping into my house with a brace of pistols in
his belt."

"I did not come here to argue. I came here for that nigger--my
property."

"Your _property!_ Is the man a slave? Now, look here, Mr. Krause; you
have used the man so brutally that he is unable to stand on his feet. He
and the girl----"

"I don't want the girl, and I daresay you do," he said, with a sneering
laugh that made me long to haul off and hit the fellow between the eyes;
"she's a nuisance, and if I ever again see her prowling about my house
and practising her infernal fooleries on my wife, I'll put a bullet
through her. But the man I _will_ have."

"Stop!" I cried warningly, as he took a step toward the sick man, "stop,
before you run yourself into mischief. Listen to me. I have but to raise
my hand and call, and you will find yourself trussed up fore and aft to
a pole like a pig, and carried back to your village."

"Out of my way," he shouted hoarsely, as with blazing eyes he tried to
thrust me aside.

"Back, man, back!" I cried. "Are you mad? The natives here will kill you
if you attempt to force----"

"And I'll kill you, you meddlesome English hog," he said through his set
teeth, and, before I could guard, his right hand shot out and grasped
me by the throat, and he literally swung me off my feet and dashed me
against the centre posts of the house with such violence that I went
down in a heap