“Yes,” answered the half-caste, “I am the man.”
Palmer extended his hand. “You're welcome to my house, Frank Porter. And there's no fear of the captain coming ashore again to look for you. Now come inside, and let me dress that ugly slash for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Palmer. But I did not come to you for that. I came to see if you can give me a berth of some sort on your station. I'm a pretty handy man at almost anything.”
The trader thought a moment; then he looked up quickly. “I cannot give you anything to do on the station—there is nothing to do. But I will give you five hundred dollars and a home in my house if you will help me to do one thing.”
“What is that?”
“Put a bullet into a man here who has murdered thirty people within ten years. I cannot do it alone, I have tried and failed, and these people cannot help me. Come inside, and I'll tell you all about it.”
The half-caste followed Palmer into his sitting-room, and the trader, getting needles and silk thread from his wife, stitched up the wound in the man's face. Then he gave him a glass of whiskey, and as they smoked their pipes, told him the story of Jinaban, the Outlaw.
Two years before, when Palmer first landed on the white beach of Matelotas Lagoon to settle down as a trader for turtle-shell, Jinaban was one of the three chiefs who ruled over the cluster of palm-clad islets—the two others were his half-brothers, Jelik and Rao. All three had met the white man as soon as he landed, and he and they had exchanged gifts and vows of friendship after the manner of the people of Las Matelotas.
But Jinaban, who was a man of violent temper, was bitterly aggrieved when Palmer decided to build his house and trading station in the village ruled over by his half-brother Jelik. He had long been anxious to secure a white trader for his own village, and bitter words passed between Jelik and Raô and himself. Palmer stood by and said nothing. He had taken an instinctive dislike to Jinaban, whose reputation as a man of a cruel and sanguinary nature had been known to him long before he had come to settle in the Carolines. But Palmer was not a man to be daunted by Jinaban's fierce looks and the bitter epithets he applied to his half-brothers, whom he accused of “stealing” the white man from him. He quietly announced his intention of standing to the agreement he had made with Jelik; and the next day that chief's people set about building a house for the trader. In a month the house was finished, and Palmer, who meant to try the lagoon for pearl shell, and thought that his stay on the island would be a long one, announced his intention of taking a wife, and asked Jelik for a young girl named Letanë. She was about seventeen, and her gentle, amiable disposition had attracted him from the first day he landed on the island. Calling the girl to him, Jelik questioned her as to her inclinations, and she at once, in the most innocent and charming manner, expressed her liking for the white man, but said that her uncle Jinaban, who had gained some idea of her feelings towards Palmer, had threatened to kill her if she dared to marry him; for he (Jinaban) had determined that the people of Ailap—Jelik's village—should not monopolise him altogether, and that a wife should be chosen from his (Jinaban's) village.