“Plenty missionaries get killed. And, all the man-o'-war captains know that the Mayou bush-men{*} are very savage. Some day—in about a week after I have gone away in the schooner, you will take the missionary and his wife to the little bush town, that Peter and Burrowes tell me he goes to sometimes. They will sleep there that night. You and some of your people will go with them and sleep in the same house with them. You do that sometimes, Banderah, eh?”
* “Bushmen,” a term applied to natives living in the
interior of the Melanesian Islands.
“Yes, sometimes.”
This was perfectly true. The bush tribes on Mayou, although at war with Banderah and his coast tribes, yet occasionally met their foes in an amicable manner at a bush village called Rogga, which had been for many decades a neutral ground. Here Banderah and his people, carrying fish, tobacco, and bamboos filled with salt water,{*} would meet small parties of bush people, who, in exchange for the commodities brought by Banderah, would give him yams, hogs, and wild pigeons. At several of these meetings Mr. Deighton had been present, in the vain hope that he might establish friendly relations with the savage and cannibal people of the interior.
* Having no salt, the bush tribes of Melanesia, who dare not
visit the coast, buy salt water from the coast tribes. They
meet a a spot which is always sacredly kept as a neutral
ground.
“Well,” resumed the ruffian, “you will sleep at Rogga with the missionary and his wife. In the morning, when you and your people awake, the missionary and his wife will be dead. Then you will hurry to this place; you will go on board the man-of-war and tell the captain that the bad bushmen killed them when they were asleep.”
“I savee. Everybody savee Mayou man-a-bush like kill white men.”
“That's it, Bandy. No one will say you did it.”
“What 'bout Peter an' Burrowes? Perhaps by and by those two fellow get mad with me some day, and tell man-o'-war I bin kill three white man and one white woman.”
“Banderah,” and Bilker slapped him on the shoulder, “you're a damned smart fellow! There's no mistake about that. Now look here, I want you to get another thousand sovereigns—the thousand I am going to give to Burrowes and Peter. And after the man-a-bush have killed the missionary and his wife, they are coming down to the beach one night soon after, and will kill the two white men. Then there will be no more white men left, and you'll be the biggest chief in the world—as big as Maafu Tonga.”