A SOUTH SEA ISLAND TRADER

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1509, 31 January 1901, Page 61

A SOUTH SEA ISLAND TRADER

One day in November, IS6O, a small Sydney trading schooner called off the island of JVlokil, one of the Caroline Group of the North-West Pacific. The one white trader living on the island cam© off in his whale-boat. He was an American, a man of about fifty years of age, bronze-faced, stout and muscular, and quiet and unassuming in his manner. He had just agreed to supply the captain with some pigs, turtle, and poultry in return for some European provisions, when the Chinese cock and steward came into' the cabin. The trader looked -at the man curiously for a moment. “Is he a Cantonese ?” he asked the skipper. “Ay! He comes from the Kwang Tung province, I believe/’ “Thought so, by the run or his eye. Been with you long, sir “No- I only shipped him in Sydney this trip,” replied the master. Presently the American rose. “Well, I guess I’ll get along ashore, captain ; perhaps it would be just as well if you let your steward come with me and pick out the pigs you Avant. Trust a Chinaman to tell a good pig.” The captain assented to the preposition, and in a few minutes the trader, accompanied by the steArard, left the ship and went on shore. An hour afterward the boat returned, bringing the pigs, turtle and poultry, but without the Chinese steward. “Where is my steward ?’’ asked the captain. “He’s dead,” replied the trader, calmly ; “I shot him the moment I get him inside my house. Noav, don’t get mad, captain. Here’s a man I’ve brought aboard whoTl make just as good a stc\\ rard as the Chow.”

“Why did you murder the man ?” gasped the astonished seaman. “I didn’t murder him. I shot him as I mean to shoot every d d Chinaman I come across in the South Seas. I can do it doAvn here.” Then he told his ste.ry :

“When I was a lad of fourteen I sailed with my father in a big lump of a hermaphrodite brig called the Lubra. We were in the Chma-Valparaiso trade. Left Hong-Kong one time under charter to take 36 coolies tc, Tahiti. My mother, two younger brothers, and my sister were aboard —had been, sailing in the Lubra for nigh on four years. Mato was jcay uncle. Regular family ship. We carried nine hands. I lived forard. One night, when we were two days cut, the Chows made a sudden rush. I was aloft with a Swede staving the topgallant sail. They first killed every man of the watch on deck, then they went below and slaughtered every living soul, fcr’ard and aft. In half-an-hour it was all over, and they lowered the two boats and cleared out. Tne Swede and I came on deck, and this is what we saw: My father, mother, and sister’s heads were lying on the main deck. My two little brothers, five and seven years of age, were just trunks —hands, feet, heads gene—and my sister’s body (sne was seventeen or more, maybe) was disembowelled and thrown across the fiferail. And every other body was hacked and slashed about, chunks of flesh lying everywhere. “They had set the brig on file before they left. The Dutchman and I put it out. We were picked up by a French barque the same day. “That’s why I always shoot one of the Chinamen when I get the chance.”— 8., in the “Pali Mall Gazette.”