“Then many men of both sides came to him and said, ’Let this thing be finished.  You are a strong man.  Take this robber and slay him as you would slay a pig.’  But he put them aside, and said he would fight him man to man, as Englishmen fought.

“So when Franka was rested two cutlasses were brought, and the two men stood face to face on the sand.  I kept close to Franka, for I meant to stab him if I could, but Preston angrily bade me stand back.  Then the two crossed their swords together and began to fight.  It was a great fight, but it did not last long, for Preston soon ran his sword through Franka’s chest.  I saw it come out through his back.  But as he fell and Preston bent over him he thrust his cutlass into Preston’s stomach and worked it to and fro.  Then Preston fell on him, and they died together.

“There was no more bloodshed.  Solepa and Sipi and I dressed the dead man in his best clothes, and the Ro|an Kiti men dressed Franka in his best clothes, and a great funeral feast was made, and we buried them together on the little island.  And Solepa went back again to Honolulu in a whaleship.  She was young and fair, and should have soon found another husband.  I do not know.  But Sipi was a fine wife to me.”

The Fisher Folk of Nukufetau

Early one morning, about a week after I had settled down on Nukufetau as a trader, I opened my chest of fishing-gear and began to overhaul it.  In a few minutes I was surrounded by an eager and interested group of natives, who examined everything with the greatest curiosity.

Now for the preceding twelve months I had been living on the little island of Nanomaga, a day’s sail from Nukufetau; and between Nanomaga and Nukufetau there was a great bitterness of long standing—­the Nanomagans claimed to be the most daring canoe-men and expert fishermen in all the eight isles of the Ellice Group, and the people of Nukufetau resented the claim strongly.  The feeling had been accentuated by my good friend the Samoan teacher on Nanomaga, himself an ardent fisherman, writing to his brother minister on Nukufetau and informing him that although I was not a high-class Christian I was all right in all other respects, and a good fisherman—­“all that he did not know we have taught him, therefore,” he added slyly, “let your young men watch him so that they may learn how to fish in deep and rough water, such as ours.”  These remarks were of course duly made public, and caused much indignation, neither the minister nor his flock liking the gibe about the deep, rough water; also the insinuation that anything about fishing was to be learnt from the new white man was annoying and uncalled for.