The South Sea Trader. 
3°7 
were of desperate deeds and licentious habits, 
seems to be pretty generally accepted even 
to the present day, and such belief dies hard 
where romantic adventure is concerned. Many 
of them, it is true, had to carry their lives 
in their hands, and take life to save their 
own. One such man perhaps is still alive. 
Fifty years ago, when still a young man of 
twenty-six he was shipwrecked on one of 
the Caroline Islands, and up to 1876 had 
roved about from group to group with his 
numerous children and grandchildren. On 
one occasion, when living on Kusaie Island, 
he found that a plot existed among some of his 
followers—who were all related to him—to 
seize a small trading vessel that lay at anchor 
in one of the harbours of the island. The ring¬ 
leader of the plot was one of his sons-in-law, a 
native of the Kingsmill Group. This man 
revealed his murderous designs to his wife, 
who, in her turn, communicated them to her 
white father. Arming himself, and accompanied 
by half-a-dozen of his half-caste sons, the old 
trader at once boarded the schooner, told her 
captain of the plan to seize the vessel and kill 
all hands, and said that he would, if the captain 
