“Then, whilst the crowd stood quiet, I gave Buck the facts in four words. He made a signal with his arms to the schooner, and off comes another boat with the mate and four more Kanakas, all armed.
“Then Buck took command, and leaving Tawela with a chap and orders to blow her brains out if she so much as sneezed, we drove that whole crowd along the beach right to the break of the lagoon and left them there with four gunmen covering them. Then we came back.
“We searched round and found what was left of Sellers among the bushes, then we set to.
“‘They’re unfortunate heathens,’ says Buck, ‘but they’ve got to be taught,’ and with that he set fire to Tawela’s house with his own hands. We burnt every house, we smashed everything we could smash, and we broke the canoes to flinders, fishing gear and spears and everything went, so there was nothing left of that population but the people.
“That will learn them,’ says Buck. Then he collected his men, and bundling Tawela into a boat with a parcel of pink coral we found in a shack back of her house, we pushed off. Ridley, the mate, was for shooting her—seeing the evidence on her hands—and slinging the body in the lagoon, but Buck said he was going to give her a decent trial when our minds were cool, and there was lots of time, anyway, after we’d put out. Buck, ever since his business with Sru, had been against doing things in a hurry, specially when it came to killing, so she was had on board and given in charge of two of the Kanaka crew. Then we got the hook up and out we put.
“The Kanakas were still herded at the end near the break, and as we passed through, knowing we’d got their Queen on board, they all set up a shout, ‘Tawela, Tawela’ like the crying of sea gulls, and that was the last we heard of them.
“Then, with the ship on her course, and the Kanaka bo’sun in charge of the deck, we got down to the cabin and started our court-martial.
“She deserved hanging, there were no two words about that. And I reckon it was more superstition about killing a woman than humanity, but maybe I’m wrong; anyhow, Buck brought out his idea, which was to take her to Sydney and have her tried there.
“We’d been going at it for an hour or so, when the mate was called on deck and comes back in a minute or two in a tearing rage.
“‘That wild cat,’ says he, ‘has been asking for food and won’t eat bully beef; says anything that comes out of a shell is tabu to her, turtle or oysters or shell fish, and she reckons canned stuff is the same since it’s in a tin shell. I expect she’s had lots of experience in canned stuff seeing all the ships she’s wrecked. What’s to be done with her?’