Sometimes, having worked for another planter, they have a little money. Although every planter keeps his own store, the natives, as a rule, prefer to buy from his neighbour, from vague if not quite unjustified suspicion. They rarely engage for any length of time, except when driven by the desire to buy some valuable object, generally a rifle, without which no native likes to be seen in Santo to-day. In that case several men work together for one, who afterwards indemnifies them for their help in native fashion by giving them pigs or rendering them other services. On the plantations they are suspicious and lazy, but quite harmless as long as they are not provoked. Mr. Ch. had had about thirty men working on his plantation for quite some time, and everything had gone well, until one day one of them had fallen into the Sarrakatta and been drowned. According to native law, Mr. Ch. was responsible for his death, and should have paid for him, which he omitted to do. At first there was general dismay, no one dared approach the river any more; then the natives all returned to their villages, and a few days later they swarmed round the plantation with rifles to avenge their dead relative by murdering Mr. Ch. He was warned by his boys, who were from Malekula for the most part, and this saved his life. He armed his men, and after a siege of several weeks the bushmen gave up the watch and retired. But no one would return to work for him any more. Altogether, the bushmen of Santo are none too reliable, and only the memory of a successful landing expedition of the English man-of-war a year ago keeps them quiet. On that occasion they had murdered an old Englishman and two of his daughters, just out of greed, so as to pillage his store. They had not found much, but they had to pay for the murder with the loss of their village, pigs and lives.