get labor, I could make this valley
produce enough for ten thousand people. I could load the ships with
copra and cotton and coffee."

He was twenty-two years and many thousands of miles from the great
cities of Europe, but he voiced the wail of the successful man the
world over. If he could get labor, he could turn it into building
his dreams to reality, into filling his ships with his goods for his
profit. But he had not the labor, for the fruits of a commercial
civilization had killed the islanders who had had their own dreams,
their own ships, and their own pleasures and profits in life.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Labor in the South Seas; some random thoughts on the "survival of the
fittest."

"I pictured myself cultivating many hundreds of acres when I first
came here," said Grelet. "I laid out several plantations, and once
shipped much coffee, as good, too, as any in the world. I gather
enough now for my own use, and sell none. I grew cotton and
cocoanuts on a large scale. I raise only a little now.

"There were hundreds of able-bodied men here then. I used to buy
opium from the Chinese labor-contractors and from smugglers, and
give it to my working people. A pill once a day would make the
Marquesans hustle. But the government stopped it. They say that the
book written by the Englishman, Stevenson, did it. We must find
labor elsewhere soon, Chinese, perhaps. Those two Paumotans brought
by Begole are a godsend to me. I wish some one would bring me a
hundred."

The two Paumotan youths, Tennonoku and Kedeko-lio, lay motionless on
the floor of the veranda twenty feet away. They had been sold to
Grelet for a small sum by Begole, captain of a trading-schooner. In
passing the Paumotan Islands, many hundred miles to the south,
Begole had forgotten to leave at Pukatuhu, a small atoll, a few bags
of flour he had promised to bring the chief on his next voyage, and
the chief, seeing the schooner a mile away, had ordered these boys to
swim to it and remind the skipper of his promise. Begole meanwhile
had caught a wind, and the first he knew of the message was when the
boys climbed aboard the schooner many miles to sea. He did not
trouble to land them, but brought them on to the Marquesas and sold
them to Grelet.

They spoke no Marquesan, and Grelet had difficulty in making them
understand that they must labor for him, and in enforcing his orders,
which they could not comprehend. There was little copra being made
in t