Donnegan brushed off the sarcasm. "Fooling aside, it is getting to be something of an expedition to find fruit. The natives are cleaning it out near at hand."
Turning to me Benson said, "There's another thing. The little devils have settled all around us, and everything is community property with them. Not only do they strip the fruit but they pick up anything that isn't nailed down and wander off with it."
"That's odd," I said. "Joe indicates that they place no value on possessions normally."
"Oh, they don't keep things," Donnegan explained. "They pack them off, fiddle with them and then we find them strewn all over the forest. Sometimes I'd like to wring their little necks!"
Benson looked up at him quickly. "Sounds funny coming from you, Paul. You were one of their chief defenders at the meeting last week."
Donnegan's face darkened. "That was last week, before I found out a few things. As a matter of fact, I think it's time you knew about them, too." He squatted down by us and unburdened himself.
As it so often will, a barrier had erected itself between the colony members and their leader, Phillip Benson. Donnegan somewhat shamefacedly confessed what had gone on behind this curtain of silence.
It seemed that two weeks earlier Bromley, one of the chemists, had contrived some rather crude, old-fashioned, sulphur-and-phosphorus, friction matches. Trading on the native's delight with fire, he had bribed them with matches to give him one of the tala-mangoes which he tasted, then promptly proceeded to swill until he was quite drunk.
In a generous mood he passed out matches to other male members of the colony who, in turn, made the barter and joined the party.