“Bolted before he was fit to kill,” said the sailor, mournful to think how dishonest people could be. Once the head chief, having need to punish a rebellious vassal, sent Relation-eater, who plundered and burned the offending village. The vassal decamped with his tribe. “Well, about three months after this, about daylight I was aroused by a great uproar.... Out I ran at once and perceived that M--’s premises were being sacked by the rebellious vassal who ... was taking this means of revenging himself for the rough handling he had received from our chief. Men were rushing in mad haste through the smashed windows and doors, loaded with everything they could lay hands upon.... A large canoe was floating near to the house, and was being rapidly filled with plunder. I saw a fat old Maori woman who was washerwoman, being dragged along the ground by a huge fellow who was trying to tear from her grasp one of my shirts, to which she clung with perfect desperation. I perceived at a glance that the faithful old creature would probably save a sleeve. “An old man-of-war’s man defending _his_ washing, called out, ‘Hit out, sir! ... our mob will be here in five minutes!’ “The odds were terrible, but ... I at once floored a native who was rushing by me.... I then perceived that he was one of our own people ... so to balance things I knocked down another! and then felt myself seized round the waist from behind. “The old sailor was down now but fighting three men at once, while his striped shirt and canvas trousers still hung proudly on the fence. “Then came our mob to the rescue and the assailants fled. “Some time after this a little incident worth noting happened at my friend M--’s place. Our chief had for some time back a sort of dispute with another magnate.... The question was at last brought to a fair hearing at my friend’s house. The arguments on both sides were very forcible; so much so that in the course of the arbitration our chief and thirty of his principal witnesses were shot dead in a heap before my friend’s door, and sixty others badly wounded, and my friend’s house and store blown up and burnt to ashes. “My friend was, however, consoled by hundreds of friends who came in large parties to condole with him, and who, as was quite correct in such cases, shot and ate all his stock, sheep, pigs, ducks, geese, fowls, etc., all in high compliment to himself; he felt proud.... He did not, however, survive these honors long.” Mr. Maning took this poor gentleman’s place as trader, and earnestly studied native etiquette, on which his comments are always deliciously funny. Two young Australians were his guests when there arrived one day a Maori desperado who wanted blankets; and “to explain his views more clearly knocked both my friends down, threatened to kill them both with his tomahawk, then rushed into the bedroom, dragged out all the bedclothes, and burnt them on the kitchen fire.”