"Who were they?" I asked.

"One was a man trading for Captain MacLeod of New Caledonia; the other
chap was some beachcombing fellow who had been kicked ashore at Numa
Numa by his skipper. I heard he came from Samoa originally. Anyway the
chief told me that as soon as the ship that had put the man ashore had
sailed, he was speared through the back as he was drinking a coco-nut.

"When they stripped off his clothes to make him ready for the oven, they
found he was tattoed, Samoan fashion, from the waist to the knees. Then,
as he had red hair, they cut off his head and smoke-dried it, instead of
eating it with the rest of the body; they kept it as an ornament for the
stem of a big canoe. A white man's head is a great thing at any time for
a canoe's figurehead in the Solomons, but a white man's head with red
hair is a great _mana_" (mascotte).

Then I told him that I had known the man, and gave him his antecedents.

"Ah," he said, "I daresay if you had been there you would have felt as
if you could have eaten a bit of the beggar yourself."

"I certainly do feel pleased that he's settled," I replied, as I thought
of poor Red Bird's hand.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of
Savait, by Louis Becke

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