Note: Beachcomber. A white man who settles down in one of the South Sea Islands and lives by trading with the natives for copra—the dried kernels of cocoanuts—pearl shells, and the sea slug Beche de mer; often living by wrecking, kidnapping the natives, or any nefarious scheme. Many of them have been drunken, unprincipled scoundrels, their ranks in the old days having been recruited from the convicts escaped from Botany Bay or Norfolk Island.
Chapter Sixteen.
To Carey’s rage and discomfiture he found that their captor treated him as the ship’s boy, following Bostock to the store-room and ordering him to carry the most solid of the provisions to the blacks.
“They won’t want any knives and forks and plates, young ’un. Wait a moment. Where’s the tobacco?”
This was produced in its tub, and in obedience to his orders Carey took out twenty of the long square compressed cakes.
“That’s right. Twenty of ’em, and don’t let either of the warmint snatch two.”
“How am I to stop them?” said Carey, bitterly.
“Got a fist, haven’t you?”