A Recruit, After Having Toiled Three Years On A
Plantation, Was Returned To His Own Village On Malaita.
He was clad
in all kinds of gay and sportive garments.
On his head was a top-
hat. He possessed a trade-box full of calico, beads, porpoise-
teeth, and tobacco. Hardly was the anchor down, when the villagers
were on board. The recruit looked anxiously for his own relatives,
but none was to be seen. One of the natives took the pipe out of
his mouth. Another confiscated the strings of beads from around his
neck. A third relieved him of his gaudy loin-cloth, and a fourth
tried on the top-hat and omitted to return it. Finally, one of them
took his trade-box, which represented three years' toil, and dropped
it into a canoe alongside. "That fella belong you?" the captain
asked the recruit, referring to the thief. "No belong me," was the
answer. "Then why in Jericho do you let him take the box?" the
captain demanded indignantly. Quoth the recruit, "Me speak along
him, say bokkis he stop, that fella he cross along me" - which was
the recruit's way of saying that the other man would murder him.
God's wrath, when He sent the Flood, was merely a case of being
cross along mankind.
What name? is the great interrogation of beche de mer. It all
depends on how it is uttered. It may mean: What is your business?
What do you mean by this outrageous conduct?
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