Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
Well, what name you talk along me? What place big fella marster along white man he stop?" Joan and Sheldon together listened to the tale Binu Charley had brought.
But there was no rustle, no movement; nothing but the humid oppressive silence. "Bushmen he no stop," Binu Charley called out, the sound of his voice startling more than one of them. "Allee same damn funny business. That fella Koogoo no look 'm eye belong him. He no savvee little bit." Koogoo's arms had crumpled under him, and he lay quivering where he had fallen.
And plenty fella white marster make 'm big laugh along me, say Binu Charley allee same pickaninny my word, they speak along me allee same pickaninny." Came the morning when Binu Charley noticed that the women and children had disappeared.
Returning to try to save the rifles and personal outfit, Binu Charley had seen a party of bushmen trotting down the trail, and had hidden in the bush. Here, and from the direction of the main camp, he had heard two rifle shots. And that was all. He had never seen the white men again, nor had he ventured near their old camp.
Here, also, on the shore side of the lagoon, was Binu, the place where the Minota was captured half a year previously and her captain killed by the bushmen. As we sailed in through the narrow entrance, a canoe came alongside with the news that the man-of-war had just left that morning after having burned three villages, killed some thirty pigs, and drowned a baby.
The way was beset with a thousand annoyances, chiefest among which were thorns, cunningly concealed, that penetrated the bare feet of the invaders. Once, during the afternoon, Binu Charley barely missed being impaled in a staked pit that undermined the trail. There were times when all stood still and waited for half an hour or more while Binu Charley prospected suspicious parts of the trail.
They were all there, nine of them, white men's heads, the faces of which he had been familiar with when their owners had camped in Berande compound and set up the poling-boats. Binu Charley, hugely interested, lent a hand, turning the heads around for identification, noting the hatchet-strokes, and remarking the distorted expressions.
"That fella boy he sick, belly belong him walk about," Binu Charley said, pointing to the Poonga-Poonga man whose shoulder had been scratched by the arrow an hour before. The boy was sitting down and groaning, his arms clasping his bent knees, his head drooped forward and rolling painfully back and forth.
Even as Binu Charley came to the front the stricken black's breath passed from him, and with a final convulsive stir he lay still. "Right through the heart," Sheldon said, straightening up from the stooping examination. "It must have been a trap of some sort." He noticed Joan's white, tense face, and the wide eyes with which she stared at the wreck of what had been a man the minute before.
It was a woman's head, and he had never heard of a Chinese woman in the history of the Solomons. From the ears hung two-inch-long ear-rings, and at Sheldon's direction the Binu man rubbed away the accretions of smoke and dirt, and from under his fingers appeared the polished green of jade, the sheen of pearl, and the warm red of Oriental gold.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking