"Me give 'm half-fathom shell money that fella dog." For a mere puppy this offer was generous, because half a fathom of shell- money, strung on a thread of twisted coconut fibres, was equivalent in cash to half a sovereign in English currency, to two dollars and a half in American, or, in live-pig currency, to half of a fair-sized fat pig.
"One fathom shell-money that fella dog," Van Horn countered, in his heart knowing that he would not sell Jerry for a hundred fathoms, or for any fabulous price from any black, but in his head offering so small a price over par as not to arouse suspicion among the blacks as to how highly he really valued the golden-coated son of Biddy and Terrence.
Ishikola next averred that the girl had grown much thinner, and that he, as a practical judge of meat, did not feel justified this time in bidding more than three twenty-strings of drinking coconuts.
After these amenities, the white master and the black talked of many things, the one bluffing with the white-man's superiority of intellect and knowledge, the other feeling and guessing, primitive statesman that he was, in an effort to ascertain the balance of human and political forces that bore upon his Su'u territory, ten miles square, bounded by the sea and by landward lines of an inter-tribal warfare that was older than the oldest Su'u myth.

Eternally, heads had been taken and bodies eaten, now on one side, now on the other, by the temporarily victorious tribes.

The boundaries had remained the same.

Ishikola, in crude beche- de-mer, tried to learn the Solomon Islands general situation in relation to Su'u, and Van Horn was not above playing the unfair diplomatic game as it is unfairly played in all the chancellories of the world powers.
"My word," Van Horn concluded; "you bad fella too much along this place.
Too many heads you fella take; too much kai-kai long pig along you." (Long pig, meaning barbecued human flesh.) "What name, long time black fella belong Su'u take 'm heads, kai-kai along long pig ?" Ishikola countered.
"My word," Van Horn came back, "too much along this place.

Bime by, close up, big fella warship stop 'm along Su'u, knock seven balls outa Su'u." "What name him big fella warship stop 'm along Solomons ?" Ishikola demanded.
"Big fella _Cambrian_, him fella name belong ship," Van Horn lied, too well aware that no British cruiser had been in the Solomons for the past two years.
The conversation was becoming rather a farcical dissertation upon the relations that should obtain between states, irrespective of size, when it was broken off by a cry from Tambi, who, with another lantern hanging overside at the end of his arm had made a discovery.
"Skipper, gun he stop along canoe!" was his cry.
Van Horn, with a leap, was at the rail and peering down over the barbed wire.