'Reckon thet will help you pull up some over them dead niggers.'
Hayes smiled pleasantly. 'Yes, it will about bring things even. Keep her head for that high peak on Fotuna. We'll be there early enough to start the natives digging this afternoon. Tom, you'll see some rare old trading now. Come and lend me a hand in the trade-room.'
The trade-room of the Leonie was on the port side of the main cabin; three of the state-rooms had been made into one, and shelves fitted all round. On the upper of these such articles as prints and calicoes were stored; the lower ones being filled with old-fashioned muskets, axes, tomahawks, 16-inch butcher-knives, pistols, and vast numbers of discarded short Enfield rifles with bayonets attached. On the deck were eight or ten huge tierces of negrohead tobacco, cases of gin, and kegs and boxes of powder.
Hayes, with Tom and a couple of the hands, were soon hard at work on a couple of tierces of tobacco, digging out the compact layers of the black, fragrant weed, pulling each stick apart, tying them up in bundles of ten, and passing them on deck, where they were placed in trade boxes. Then followed powder and bullets, caps, knives, bales of Turkey red twill and navy blue calico.
Hayes was in such an excellent humour that the work proceeded very pleasantly, and he talked with almost boyish exuberancy to Tom about the island of Fotuna and the natives. They were, he said, rather a saucy lot, and as he did not want to have his decks filled with three or four hundred of them, and run the risk of a fight occurring between them and his cargo of 'blackbirds,' he would do all the trading on shore, weigh the yams on the beach, and send them off in the boats to the ship.
'They are not a bad lot of people,' he added, 'although they are all good Catholics--that is, every man, woman, and child of them have crucifixes hanging round their necks--and all are born thieves. However, they know their mark, and won't try to rob me.'
Soon after dinner the Leonie sailed into a tiny little harbour under the shadow of Mount Schouten, and anchored within a few yards of the beach, and directly in front of the largest village on the island. Taking Tom with him, the captain at once went on shore, and interviewed the leading chief and the one white trader--an old white-headed Englishman, whom Tom learnt afterwards was an escaped convict. A bargain was soon made, as yams were very plentiful, no trading ship had touched at the island for many months, and the natives were eager to sell. The chief showed Hayes some specimens of the yam crop--three enormous vegetables, each of which weighed sixty or seventy pounds. Then a conch-shell was sounded, and the chief and his head men summoned the people together, and ordered them to begin digging the yams at once.
Promising to bring the trade ashore at daylight, and begin weighing the yams, Hayes, accompanied by the chief and the old trader--who seemed a respectable, quiet-mannered man--returned to the ship, leaving Tom to enjoy a few hours' pigeon-shooting along the sides of the forest-clad mountain.
The birds were uttering their deep crooing notes everywhere around him, as they fed upon the scarlet berries of the lofty maso'i trees, and the native lad who came with Tom as guide soon had eight or nine brace of the fat, heavy birds to carry. Returning by the banks of a noisy mountain stream, Tom threw himself down beside a deep crystal pool to rest, whilst the lithe, bronze-skinned native, whose only garment was a girdle of grass, ascended a coco-nut tree for some young drinking nuts. The largest of these he quickly husked with his sharp white teeth, and handed it to Tom to drink. As he drank he heard a footstep near, and looking up he saw standing beside him a man dressed in the habit of a priest. He saluted Tom politely, told him that he was Père Serge, one of the two priests living on the island, made a few inquiries about the Leonie, frowned expressively when he heard the name of Captain Hayes, but then said, cordially enough, that he would be pleased if Tom would visit him.
