Explore "The Brass Gun of the Buccaneers" by Louis Becke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Challoner was a trader at Jakoits Harbour in Ponape, one of the loveliest of the great Caroline Archipelago in the North Pacific. He was a quiet but determined-looking man of fifty, and at the time of this story had been living on Ponape for over five years. Unlike the generality of the white men who were settled on the island, he never carried arms and never entered into any of the disputes that too often occurred among them and ended in bloodshed.
Many of his neighbours were scoundrels and ruffians of the deepest dye -- deserters from whale-ships and men-of-war, or escaped criminals from California and the Australian colonies. Some of these earned a living by trading with the natives for turtle-shell and cocoanut oil, others were simply beachcombers, who attached themselves to the leading chiefs and gave their services to them in war time, receiving in return houses and land, and spending their lives in time of peace in the wildest dissipation and excesses.