Page:South Sea tales (IA southseajack00londrich).djvu/155

 could make himself heard. Then we were told our punishment. We must fill the three schooners with copra and bêche-de-mer. And we agreed, for we wanted water, and our hearts were broken, and we knew that we were children at fighting when we fought with white men who fight like hell. And when all the talk was finished, the mate stood up and mocked us, and yelled, 'Yah! Yah! Yah!' After that we paddled away in our canoes and sought water.

"And for weeks we toiled at catching bêche-de-mer and curing it, in gathering the cocoanuts and turning them into copra. By day and night the smoke rose in clouds from all the beaches of all the islands of Oolong as we paid the penalty of our wrongdoing. For in those days of death it was burned clearly on all our brains that it was very wrong to harm a white man.

"By and by, the schooners full of copra and bêche-de-mer and our trees empty of cocoanuts, the three skippers and that mate called us all together for a big talk. And