Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/192

150 so one day a number of them brought in two heads, supposed to be those of the culprits. It can be imagined how roused were the feelings of the whites by this brutal deed, and how determined they were to inflict a just punishment.

It is a gruesome tale to hear of at any time, but how much more dreadful it seems to those who knew the poor, simple, good-natured woman who so trusted these people and was in this manner done to death. It shows how fully justified are the whites in their distrust of the natives. Remember, this occurred but a few miles from the now long-established seat of Government. Every one there, as these things show, is in daily, hourly danger, and no one knows at what moment the apparently friendly natives around may not turn on them and kill them. The natives at once vanish into the interior, and it is impossible to follow them into that trackless, unknown wilderness.]

When we Herbertshöhe, and had got outside Blanche Bay and past the Mother and Daughters, which on that side look very steep and have cocoanut plantations and native houses at the foot, a regular gale set in and continued all night, with downpours of rain, terrible flashes of lightning, and the Ehrenlicht, or St. Elmo's fire, as I think we call it, burning at the masthead—it is a terribly uncanny thing to see those electrical flames burning round the mast, and this was a storm with a vengeance.

On this morning, after we left Herbertshöhe, still continued in sight of the New Britain coast, we passed Deslac, one of the French Islands, and of note as the home of King Peter.