When standing before a chief, who is smiling at you and treating you to all the courtesies his nature can conjure up, and knowing that with him you have trusted yourself for many an hour’s smoke or solitary ramble in the bush, it is difficult to realise that the same chief a week before was on the warpath, concocting the most devilish schemes, and carrying out the most fiendish atrocities on men, women, and children in his pursuit of heads. But such is the case, and one can only account for the inconsistency of it by putting these acts down to a religious mania, and thus giving these otherwise amiable and interesting creatures a certain excuse for actions which to us would seem inexcusable.

Tribe after tribe has been completely wiped out by certain powerful chiefs through a continued series of head-hunting expeditions. The methods adopted by the aggressive party are simple and generally most effective. The Rubiana natives are perhaps the most bloodthirsty of all the Solomon group, and, being both rich and powerful, they can descend on a village and overpower it by sheer {98} force of numbers, even without the use of modern weapons, which are now owned by nearly all the important tribes. The most notorious head-hunter in later years was Ingova of Rubiana lagoon, New Georgia, to whom I have already alluded. He is old and wizened now, and his hand trembles as he lifts the glass of grog he begs from you, after telling a yarn of the good old days. Yes, Ingova’s strength and valour are gone now, and could the departed spirits of the hundreds he has killed in days gone by see him as he is to-day—his feeble limbs, his shaking hand, his bloodshot eyes, and seared face—they would indeed wonder what it was they feared in him. Where is the great spirit that once possessed him? they would ask. They would scorn him now, and the women would laugh at him—poor, feeble, tottering Ingova.

Years ago Ingova’s Euro was hung with skulls, hundreds of them were strung in the cross-beams, with staring, vacant eyeholes, which looked out of nothing and yet seemed to see everything. Their drooping lower jaws, showing sets of white teeth which glistened in the rays of the moon, made Ingova’s heart throb with pride as he stood and tried to count them. White naked skulls of brave men all hung in rows—they had all belonged to {99} men, for a woman’s head is not worthy of such an honour.