nd a fat
hog for him. We agreed, and Dandy was taken on shore and chained up
outside the cook-house to keep away thieving natives.

About nine o'clock that evening, as the skipper and I were sitting on
deck, we heard a fearful yell from Charley's house--a few hundred
yards away from where we were anchored. The yell was followed by a wild
clamour from many hundreds of native throats, and we saw several scores
of people rushing towards the trader's dwelling. Then came the sound of
two shots in quick succession.

"Haul the boat alongside," roared our skipper, "there's mischief going
on on shore."

In a minute we, with the boat's crew, had seized our arms, tumbled into
the boat and were racing for the beach.

Jumping out, we tore to the house. It seemed pretty quiet. Charley
was in his sitting-room, binding up his wife's hand, and smoking in an
unconcerned sort of a way.

"What is wrong, Charley?" we asked.

"That infernal mongrel of yours nearly bit my wife's hand off. Did it
when she tried to stroke him. I soon settled him. If you go to the back
you will see some native women preparing the brute for the oven. The
niggers here like baked dog. Guess you fellows will have to give me back
that thirteen dollars. But you can keep the hog."

So Dandy came to a just and fitting end.

CHAPTER X ~ KALA-HOI, THE NET-MAKER

Old Kala-hoi, the net-maker, had ceased work for the day, and was seated
on a mat outside his little house, smoking his pipe, looking dreamily
out upon the blue waters of Leone Bay, on Tutuila Island, and enjoying
the cool evening breeze that blew upon his bare limbs and played with
the two scanty tufts of snow-white hair that grew just above his ears.

As he sat and smoked in quiet content, Marsh (the mate of our vessel)
and I discerned him from the beach, as we stepped out of the boat We
were both tired--Marsh with weighing and stowing bags of copra in the
steaming hold, and I with paying the natives for it in trade goods--a
task that had taken me from dawn till supper time. Then, as the smell of
the copra and the heat of the cabin were not conducive to the enjoyment
of supper, we first had a bathe alongside the ship, got into clean
pyjamas and came on shore to have a chat with old Kala-hoi.

"Got anything to eat, Kala-hoi?" we asked, as we sat down on the mat, in
front of the ancient, who smilingly bade us welcome.

"My oven is made; and in it are a fat mullet, four breadfruit, some
_taro_