



Produced by David Widger





THE TAPU OF BANDERAH

By Louis Becke

C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.

1901





I ~ THE "STARLIGHT"

As the rising sun had just begun to pierce the misty tropic haze of
early dawn, a small, white-painted schooner of ninety or a hundred tons
burden was bearing down upon the low, densely-wooded island of Mayou,
which lies between the coast of south-east New Guinea and the murderous
Solomon Group--the grave of the white man in Melanesia.

The white population of Mayou was not large, for it consisted only of
an English missionary and his wife--who was, of course, a white woman--a
German trader named Peter Schwartzkoff and his native wife; an English
trader named Charlie Blount, with his two half-caste sons and daughters;
and an American trader and ex-whaler, named Nathaniel Burrowes, with his
wives.

Although the island is of large extent, and of amazing fertility, the
native population was at this time comparatively small, numbering only
some three thousand souls