ht," she said, "I will bring a piece of kava
root and make kava for you."

The news about the measles decided me. I resolved to at least spend
another day and night with my host. He was pleased.

Soon after breakfast he showed me around. His retreat was practically
impregnable. One man with a supply of breech-loading ammunition could
beat off a hundred foes. On the roof of the cave was a hole large enough
to let a man pass through, and from the top itself there was a most
glorious view. A mile away on the starboard hand, and showing through
the forest green, was a curving streak of bright red--it was the road,
or rather track, that led to Siumu. We filled our pipes, sat down and
talked.

How long had he lived there? I asked. Five months. He had found the cave
one day when in chase of a wild sow and her litter. Afraid of being shot
by the Siumu people? No, he was on good terms with _them_. Very often he
would shoot a wild pig and carry it to a certain spot on the road, and
leave it for the villagers. But he could not go into the village itself.
It was too risky--some one might be tempted to get those hundred Chile
dollars from the Germans. Food? There was plenty. Hundreds of wild pigs
in the mountains, and thousands of pigeons. The pigs he shot with his
Snider, the pigeons he snared, for he had no shot gun, and would very
much like to have one. Twice every week Sa Laea brought him food.
Tobacco too, sometimes, when she could buy it or beg it from the trader
at Siumu. Sometimes he would cross over to the northern watershed and
catch a basketful of the big speckled trout which teem in the mountain
pools. Some of these he would send by Sa Laea to the chief of Siumu,
who would send him in return a piece of kava, and some young drinking
coconuts as a token of good-will. Once when he went to fish he found
a young Samoan and two girls about to net a pool. The man fired at him
with his pigeon gun and the pellets struck him in the chest. Then he
(Te-bari) shot the man through the chest with his Winchester. No, he did
not harm the girls--he let them run away.

Sa Laea was a very good girl. Whenever he trapped a _manu-mea_ (the rare
_Didunculus_, or tooth-billed pigeon) she would take it to Apia and sell
it for five dollars--sometimes ten. He was saving this money. When he
had forty dollars he and Sa Laea were going to leave Samoa and go to
Maiana. Kapitan Cameron had promised Sa Laea to take them there when
they had forty doll