On the east side of Guadalcana is a little trading {93} station, where not long ago “French Jack” resided, until at an untimely moment the blacks swooped down on him, carried away his wife and cut him to pieces; the crew of the little trading-boat, when it called for his copra, found his remains and buried them. But this is an old story, one of the many that come from these islands. A call from the Governor and the arrest of a few of the culprits is the way in which these stories end, and the captives eke out the rest of their existence in durance vile at Fiji, or if proved guilty pay the proper penalty.

For his place of residence poor “French Jack” had chosen one of the brightest spots on the island and built his hut in the most approved style, with an uninterrupted view of the sea. Close by his hut was a long shed where his servants, or “boys” as they are called, slept after their work of drying the copra, husking ivory, and attending to the other light duties of a trader’s establishment. At the back of his house was his yam patch and banana grove; behind that the wild thick scrub and the bush.

A lonely spot for any one to live, but such are many of the settling places of a trader, and to those who live in the bush there is no feeling of loneliness: in the crowded streets of a big city these same men might be overpowered by their solitude.