AMONG THE CANNIBALS 105 



cats. We got two or three youngsters daily, and I, 

 the Government agent, amused myself killing fish with 

 dynamite in the shallow lagoon waters, and shooting 

 shore birds along the beach. We had been here three 

 or four days, and everything going on quietly, when 

 I was called back to the vessel by signal (I had been 

 fishing on an adjoining reef). In ten minutes I was 

 on deck, to see some twenty recruits waiting for me, 

 having come off in their own canoes, as they usually 

 do here. Now no one can recruit except in the agent's 

 presence ; but these men were no recruits, they were 

 the principal men and warriors of Suluhow ; recruits 

 are striplings and lads, from fifteen, years to twenty- 

 four or so. Many of them were middle-aged, and 

 had wives and children. ' Surely these fathers do not 

 want to come to work, and leave their families,' I said 

 to our interpreter. However, the interpreter said 

 smoothly he did not know, they said they wanted to 

 go and work for the whites, and that was all he could 

 tell they were good men and warriors' the teeth of 

 the town,' he said, grinning diabolically. So, very 

 reluctantly, at last I had to take them. 



Next morning twenty more warriors turned up, from 

 their own canoes again, and I put them on the books 

 with many misgivings not a boy among the lot. I 

 was the only old hand in the ship, and it was dead 

 against my advice we had anchored here at all. The 

 fat first mate had given up the sea for years, and had 

 just taken to it again, and had never been to Solomons 

 before ; the second was a mere boy, twenty-four or so, 

 with no experience in these wild seas, and said he 

 considered it foolish to go armed day and night as I 

 did ; the * nigs ' were first-rate sort of fellows, if 



