s. Some were weaving mats of the pandanus leaf, one
old man was busy with a _kava_ bowl, the children were playing, the
women went about their household chores. Walker, a smile on his lips,
came to the chief's house.

"_Talofa-li_," said the chief.

"_Talofa_," answered Walker.

Manuma was making a net. He sat with a cigarette between his lips and
looked up at Walker with a smile of triumph.

"You have decided that you will not make the road?"

The chief answered.

"Not unless you pay us one hundred pounds."

"You will regret it." He turned to Manuma. "And you, my lad, I shouldn't
wonder if your back was very sore before you're much older."

He rode away chuckling. He left the natives vaguely uneasy. They feared
the fat sinful old man, and neither the missionaries' abuse of him nor
the scorn which Manuma had learnt in Apia made them forget that he had a
devilish cunning and that no man had ever braved him without in the long
run suffering for it. They found out within twenty-four hours what
scheme he had devised. It was characteristic. For next morning a great
band of men, women, and children came into the village and the chief men
said that they had made a bargain with Walker to build the road. He had
offered them twenty pounds and they had accepted. Now the cunning lay in
this, that the Polynesians have rules of hospitality which have all the
force of laws; an etiquette of absolute rigidity made it necessary for
the people of the village not only to give lodging to the strangers, but
to provide them with food and drink as long as they wished to stay. The
inhabitants of Matautu were outwitted. Every morning the workers went
out in a joyous band, cut down trees, blasted rocks, levelled here and
there and then in the evening tramped back again, and ate and drank, ate
heartily, danced, sang hymns, and enjoyed life. For them it was a
picnic. But soon their hosts began to wear long faces; the strangers
had enormous appetites, and the plantains and the bread-fruit vanished
before their rapacity; the alligator-pear trees, whose fruit sent to
Apia might sell for good money, were stripped bare. Ruin stared them in
the face. And then they found that the strangers were working very
slowly. Had they received a hint from Walker that they might take their
time? At this rate by the time the road was finished there would not be
a scrap of food in the village. And worse than this, they were a
laughing-stock; when one or other