Clark’s body was never found, and the miners, having lost all their provisions, tools, and practically all their arms, decided to return to the mouth of the river. On the way down they were greeted with spears and jeers, and had to clear their way every now and then with a shower of bullets from their revolvers, and yet when they had come by these same villages on their way up the river they had met with nothing but friendliness. To this day the reason of the attack is not known, in spite of the fact that the Queensland Government sent an expedition to inquire into the matter, and to capture the natives responsible for Clark’s death. Besides the grim stories of the Pacific there are plenty of amusing ones, and sometimes funny anecdotes are told of weird traders who have taken up their quarters along the coast. No one can go round far without meeting one, if not more, of these oddities. Aoba, in the New Hebrides, however, stands unique in possessing the most original, if unorthodox, trader who has visited these islands for many a long year. Maybe the old chap is dead and {79} buried now, for I am writing of 1894 when “Tartan Jock” lived on Aoba. He was a wild Highlander with chest and shoulders like an ox. His face was as rugged as the mountains of his native country, and his accent was one you could cut with a knife. From his youth upwards he had led a life of adventure, and had come at last to the most God-forsaken island in the world to finish his days in peace and quietness, and to this end he had chosen the most dangerous and cut-throat part of the New Hebrides. Yet he seemed to have no particular desire that his death should be a sudden one. A year or so before going to Aoba he had paid a visit to his birthplace to see the old folks, but his stay there had been a short one, and the only result of it was that the brogue had gotten into his nostrils again, and judging by the sound of it would remain there till the sharp spear of one of his black neighbours let it out. As tough a customer as ever trod these islands was Jock, but, strange to say, the natives rather liked him, as was proved by the fact that his tenancy of the tumble-down trader’s house on the beach had been longer than that of any of his predecessors.