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Updated: June 1, 2025
Ratu Lala's cousin, Ratu Kandavu Levu, is a very enthusiastic cricketer, and has a very good cricket club with a pavilion at his island of Bau. He plays many matches against the white club in Suva, and only last year he took an eleven over to Australia to tour that country. I was not aware of this, and as I had brought a bat and ball with me, I got up several games shortly after my arrival.
Pendin' McGuffey's reflections on the hamperin' of crime in Kandavu, however, we'll turn our attention to the prime object of the expedition. We've had our little fun and it's high time we got down to business.
He and Captain Scraggs had spent the morning seated on deck under an awning, watching the beach for signs of a sortie on the part of the natives of Kandavu to recapture their king.
"But we'll be chased by real gunboats if we do that," objected Captain Scraggs. "Those Jap gunboats shoot to kill. Can't you think of somethin' else, Gib?" "Well," said Mr. Gibney, "for a starter, I can. Suppose we just head straight for Kandavu Island in the Fijis, and scheme around for a cargo of black coral? It's only worth about fifty dollars a pound.
He was a cannibal in them days, but the chaplain aboard showed him how foolish it was to do such things, and finally Tabu-Tabu got religion and asked as a special favour to be allowed to return to Kandavu to civilize his people.
Havin' a schooner o' your own from now on, you won't be tempted to steal one an' commit wholesale murder a-doin' it. You're forgiven, my man. Take the Maggie II with our blessin', organize a comp'ny, an' go back to Kandavu an' make some money for yourself. Scraggsy, are you a-willin' to prove that you've given this errin' mate complete forgiveness by shakin' hands with him?"
At 6:30 o'clock of the morning of the day following the frightful experience of Commodore Gibney and Captain Scraggs with the cannibals of Kandavu, the members of the Maggie II Syndicate faced each other across the breakfast table with appetites in no wise diminished by the exciting events of the preceding day. Captain Scraggs appeared with a lump on the back of his head as big as a goose egg.
Ten minutes later the anchor was hanging at the hawsepipe, and under her power the Maggie II swung slowly in the lagoon, pointed her sharp bow for the opening in the reef, and bounded away for the open sea. Captain Scraggs jammed on all of her lower sails and within two hours the island of Kandavu had faded forever from their vision.
Gibney made out a cluster of tall palms at the southerly end of the island, and as the schooner held lazily on her course he could discern the white breakers foaming over the reefs that guarded the entrance to the harbour. "That's Kandavu, all right," announced the commodore. "I was there in '89 with Bull McGinty in the schooner Dashin' Wave.
Though dignified, he wore an extremely fierce expression, so much so that I instinctively felt his subjects had good cause to treat him with the respect and fear that I had heard they gave him. He belongs to the Fijian royal family, and though he does not rank as high as his cousin, Ratu Kandavu Levu, whom I also visited at Bau, he is infinitely more powerful, and owns more territory.
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