They were the two women who did the cooking for the labourers, and their offence had consisted of one of them taking a bath in the big cauldron in which the potatoes were boiled.

The blacks were not outraged from the standpoint of cleanliness; they often took baths in the cauldrons themselves.

The trouble lay in that the bather had been a low, degraded, wretched female; for to the Solomon Islander all females are low, degraded, and wretched.
Next morning, Joan and Sheldon, at breakfast, were aroused by a swelling murmur of angry voices.

The first rule of Berande had been broken.

The compound had been entered without permission or command, and all the two hundred labourers, with the exception of the boss-boys, were guilty of the offence.