“It’s a damned lie.  There ain’t been a shot fired.  The nigger fell overboard.”

Captain Hansen regarded Bertie with unblinking, lack-lustre eyes.

“I—­I thought—­” Bertie was beginning.

“Shots?  Did you hear any shots, Mr. Jacobs?”

“Not a shot,” replied Mr. Jacobs.

The skipper looked at his guest triumphantly, and said: 

“Evidently an accident.  Let us go down, Mr. Arkwright, and finish dinner.”

Bertie slept that night in the captain’s cabin, a tiny stateroom off the main-cabin.  The for’ard bulkhead was decorated with a stand of rifles.  Over the bunk were three more rifles.  Under the bunk was a big drawer, which when he pulled it out, he found filled with ammunition dynamite, and several boxes of detonators.  He elected to take the settee on the opposite side.  Lying conspicuously on the small table, was the Arla’s log.  Bertie did not know that it had been especially prepared for the occasion by Captain Malu, and he read therein how on September 21, two boat’s crew had fallen overboard and been drowned.  Bertie read between the lines and knew better.  He read how the Arla’s whale-boat had been bushwacked at Sulu and had lost three men; of how the skipper discovered the cook stewing human flesh on the galley fire—­flesh purchased by the boat’s crew ashore in Fui; of how an accidental discharge of dynamite, while signalling, had killed another boat’s crew; of night attacks; ports fled from between the dawns; attacks by bushmen in mangrove swamps and by fleets of salt-water men in the larger passages.  One item that occurred with monotonous frequency was death by dysentery.  He noticed with alarm that two white men had so died—­guests, like himself on the Arla.

“I say, you know,” Bertie said next day to Captain Hansen.  “I’ve been glancing through your log.”

The skipper displayed quick vexation that the log had been left lying about.

“And all that dysentery, you know, that’s all rot, just like the accidental drownings,” Bertie continued.  “What does dysentery really stand for?”

The skipper openly admired his guest’s acumen, stiffened himself to make indignant denial, then gracefully surrendered.

“You see, it’s like this, Mr. Arkwright.  These islands have got a bad enough name as it is.  It’s getting harder every day to sign on white men.  Suppose a man is killed.  The company has to pay through the nose for another man to take the job.  But if the man merely dies of sickness, it’s all right.  The new chums don’t mind disease.  What they draw the line at is being murdered.  I thought the skipper of the Arla had died of dysentery when I took his billet.  Then it was too late.  I’d signed the contract.”

“Besides,” said Mr. Jacobs, “there’s altogether too many accidental drownings anyway.  It don’t look right.  It’s the fault of the government.  A white man hasn’t a chance to defend himself from the niggers.”