Henry uses lime-juice undiluted. And I believe that
when corrosive sublimate is slow in taking hold, alternate dressings
of peroxide of hydrogen are just the thing. There are white men in
the Solomons who stake all upon boracic acid, and others who are
prejudiced in favour of lysol. I also have the weakness of a
panacea. It is California. I defy any man to get a Solomon Island
sore in California.
We ran down the lagoon from Langa Langa, between mangrove swamps,
through passages scarcely wider than the Minota, and past the reef
villages of Kaloka and Auki. Like the founders of Venice, these
salt-water men were originally refugees from the mainland. Too weak
to hold their own in the bush, survivors of village massacres, they
fled to the sand-banks of the lagoon. These sand-banks they built
up into islands. They were compelled to seek their provender from
the sea, and in time they became salt-water men. They learned the
ways of the fish and the shellfish, and they invented hooks and
lines, nets and fish-traps. They developed canoe-bodies. Unable to
walk about, spending all their time in the canoes, they became
thick-armed and broad-shouldered, with narrow waists and frail
spindly legs. Controlling the sea-coast, they became wealthy, trade
with the interior passing largely through their hands. But
perpetual enmity exists between them and the bushmen. Practically
their only truces are on market-days, which occur at stated
intervals, usually twice a week. The bushwomen and the salt-water
women do the bartering. Back in the bush, a hundred yards away,
fully armed, lurk the bushmen, while to seaward, in the canoes, are
the salt-water men. There are very rare instances of the market-day
truces being broken. The bushmen like their fish too well, while
the salt-water men have an organic craving for the vegetables they
cannot grow on their crowded islets.
Thirty miles from Langa Langa brought us to the passage between
Bassakanna Island and the mainland. Here, at nightfall, the wind
left us, and all night, with the whale-boat towing ahead and the
crew on board sweating at the sweeps, we strove to win through. But
the tide was against us. At midnight, midway in the passage, we
came up with the Eugenie, a big recruiting schooner, towing with two
whale-boats. Her skipper, Captain Keller, a sturdy young German of
twenty-two, came on board for a "gam," and the latest news of
Malaita was swapped back and forth. He had been in luck, having
gathered in twenty recruits at the village of Fiu. While lying
there, one of the customary courageous killings had taken place.
The murdered boy was what is called a salt-water bushman - that is, a
salt-water man who is half bushman and who lives by the sea but does
not live on an islet. Three bushmen came down to this man where he
was working in his garden.
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