"Yes," the Frenchman shouts back in his pigeon-English. "Me de commander of dis French ship. Want to buy boys. Must sell them to us. Tanaki French island. Discovered by Bougainville."
"No, no," says the Chief in pigeon-English again. "Tanaki no belong a man a oui-oui. Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Capitaney Cook find him long time back. My father little fellow then; him see Capitaney, him tell me often. Capitaney Cook no man a oui-oui; him fellow English."
The other natives joined in at once with their loud cry, "Chief speak true. Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Tanaki no belong a man a oui-oui. If man a oui-oui want to take Tanaki, man a Tanaki come out and fight him." And they threw themselves at once into a threatening attitude.
"Have you got any Englishmen here?" the French skipper called out, to make sure of his ground.
"Yes," says the missionary—our boys' father—standing out from the crowd. "Three English families here. Settled on the island. And we deny that this group belongs to the French Republic."
At that the Frenchman pulled back a bit. When he saw there was likely to be opposition, and that his proceedings were watched by three English families, he drew in his horns a little. He knew if he interfered too openly with the missionaries' proceedings, an English gunboat might come along, sooner or later, and overhaul him for fomenting discord on an island known to be under the British protectorate. So he only answered in French, "Well, we're peaceable traders, Monsieur. We don't want to interfere with the British Government. Consider us friends. All we desire is to hire laborers." And he landed his boat's crew before the very face of Macglashin and the Tanaki warriors.
At first, as often happens in these islands, the natives were very little disposed to trade with the strangers in boys or women, for they were afraid of the Frenchmen; and Macglashin and the other missionary did all they knew to prevent the new comers from carrying off any of the islanders into practical slavery. But after awhile the Frenchmen produced their regulation bottles of square gin (that's what they call Hollands in the South Pacific), and began to treat the Chief and the other savages to drinks all round, as much as you liked, with nothing to pay for it. In a very short time the Chief had got so much liquor aboard that his legs wouldn't answer the rudder any longer, and he began to reel about like a perfect madman. Most of the other full-grown men natives followed suit before long, and lay down on the beach half dead with drunkenness. Perhaps the liquor was drugged; perhaps it wasn't; but anyhow, in spite of all the missionaries could do, the shore before nightfall was in a condition of the wildest and most bestial orgies. The men, in what the newspapers call "a high state of vinous exhilaration," were ready to sell their boys and girls, or anything else on earth for a little more gin; and as the missionaries were naturally helpless to prevent it, the Frenchman was soon driving a roaring trade in flesh and blood against the drunken savages.
The business-like way they went to work, Jack and Martin told us, was horribly disgusting. The women, indeed, they tried to wheedle and cajole—"You like go along a New Caledonia along a me? Only three yam times; then ship bring you back again. Very good feed; plenty nyam-nyam. Pay very good. Pay money. Lots of shop. You buy what you like: you buy red dress, red handkerchief, beads like-a-chiefie. No fight; no beat; no swear at you. You good girl; I good fellow master." But if they couldn't induce them, by fair words and promises and little presents of cheap French finery, to put their mark to their sham indentures, then they just knocked them down with a blow on the head, dragged them by their hair to the boats hard by, and got their fathers or husbands to put their marks, and receive a few dollars and some red cloth in payment.
As for the boys, they handled them like so many animals in a market. "Turn round, cochon! Show me your faces! Mille tonnerres, let me see how you can run, you dirty young blackguard!" They examined them as a veterinary would examine a horse. "Why, there was our little fellow, Nangaree," Jack said to us with deep concern—"Nangaree, that used to clean up things for mother at the mission-house: his father sold him for twenty dollars. The captain looked at his legs, and at the glands in his throat, to see if he'd had the chicken-pox and the measles. Then he said to his mate, 'This lot's cheap enough. He's a first-rate lad, and can speak English. He'll do for the hold. Bundle him along!' And the mate caught him up by the scruff of his neck and hauled him to the boats, kicking and screaming; and that was the last we saw of poor Nangaree!"
For three days and nights, it seems, this horrible inhuman market or slave-fair went on upon the beach, the Frenchmen taking care to keep the natives well primed with spirits all the time, till they'd got their hold full, and were prepared to sail away again with their living cargo. Then at last they upped anchor, and out of the harbor. But before they went, the skipper, it appears, who was angry at the missionaries for having interfered with him, and was afraid they might report his proceedings to the British Government when next the mission ship came that way on her provisioning rounds, took aside the Chief in a confidential chat, and tried to inflame his mind, all mad drunk that he was, against the English residents. Apparently he had made so good a three days' work of it with his horrible trade, and found it so convenient to draw his supplies from this remote and almost unvisited island, that he thought it would be nice if before his next visit he could get rid altogether of these meddlesome strangers. He didn't want European witnesses to crop up against him in future; so he told the Chief, with a great show of confidence, that Macglashin and his friends were not English at all, but Scotch; and he pointed out that it was uncomfortable for the natives to be interfered with in their trading operations by a set of white-livered curs who objected to the selling of boys and girls into temporary slavery. Surely a Chief had a right to do as he would with his own subjects! What else he said, Heaven knows, but this is what happened as soon as the French, with their horrid cargo, had got well clear of the unhappy island.