of them went to some distant hamlet on
an errand he found that the story had got there before him, and he was
met with derisive laughter. There is nothing the Kanaka can endure less
than ridicule. It was not long before much angry talk passed among the
sufferers. Manuma was no longer a hero; he had to put up with a good
deal of plain speaking, and one day what Walker had suggested came to
pass: a heated argument turned into a quarrel and half a dozen of the
young men set upon the chief's son and gave him such a beating that for
a week he lay bruised and sore on the pandanus mats. He turned from side
to side and could find no ease. Every day or two the administrator rode
over on his old mare and watched the progress of the road. He was not a
man to resist the temptation of taunting the fallen foe, and he missed
no opportunity to rub into the shamed inhabitants of Matautu the
bitterness of their humiliation. He broke their spirit. And one morning,
putting their pride in their pockets, a figure of speech, since pockets
they had not, they all set out with the strangers and started working on
the road. It was urgent to get it done quickly if they wanted to save
any food at all, and the whole village joined in. But they worked
silently, with rage and mortification in their hearts, and even the
children toiled in silence. The women wept as they carried away bundles
of brushwood. When Walker saw them he laughed so much that he almost
rolled out of his saddle. The news spread quickly and tickled the people
of the island to death. This was the greatest joke of all, the crowning
triumph of that cunning old white man whom no Kanaka had ever been able
to circumvent; and they came from distant villages, with their wives and
children, to look at the foolish folk who had refused twenty pounds to
make the road and now were forced to work for nothing. But the harder
they worked the more easily went the guests. Why should they hurry, when
they were getting good food for nothing and the longer they took about
the job the better the joke became? At last the wretched villagers could
stand it no longer, and they were come this morning to beg the
administrator to send the strangers back to their own homes. If he would
do this they promised to finish the road themselves for nothing. For him
it was a victory complete and unqualified. They were humbled. A look of
arrogant complacence spread over his large, naked face, and he seemed to
swell in his