“You see, you don’t understand the situation,” he began.  “In the first place, the blacks have to be ruled sternly.  Kindness is all very well, but you can’t rule them by kindness only.  I accept all that you say about the Hawaiians and the Tahitians.  You say that they can be handled that way, and I believe you.  I have had no experience with them.  But you have had no experience with the blacks, and I ask you to believe me.  They are different from your natives.  You are used to Polynesians.  These boys are Melanesians.  They’re blacks.  They’re niggers—­look at their kinky hair.  And they’re a whole lot lower than the African niggers.  Really, you know, there is a vast difference.”

“They possess no gratitude, no sympathy, no kindliness.  If you are kind to them, they think you are a fool.  If you are gentle with them they think you are afraid.  And when they think you are afraid, watch out, for they will get you.  Just to show you, let me state the one invariable process in a black man’s brain when, on his native heath, he encounters a stranger.  His first thought is one of fear.  Will the stranger kill him?  His next thought, seeing that he is not killed, is:  Can he kill the stranger?  There was Packard, a Colonial trader, some twelve miles down the coast.  He boasted that he ruled by kindness and never struck a blow.  The result was that he did not rule at all.  He used to come down in his whale-boat to visit Hughie and me.  When his boat’s crew decided to go home, he had to cut his visit short to accompany them.  I remember one Sunday afternoon when Packard had accepted our invitation to stop to dinner.  The soup was just served, when Hughie saw a nigger peering in through the door.  He went out to him, for it was a violation of Berande custom.  Any nigger has to send in word by the house-boys, and to keep outside the compound.  This man, who was one of Packard’s boat’s-crew, was on the veranda.  And he knew better, too.  ‘What name?’ said Hughie.  ’You tell ’m white man close up we fella boat’s-crew go along.  He no come now, we fella boy no wait.  We go.’  And just then Hughie fetched him a clout that knocked him clean down the stairs and off the veranda.”

“But it was needlessly cruel,” Joan objected.  “You wouldn’t treat a white man that way.”

“And that’s just the point.  He wasn’t a white man.  He was a low black nigger, and he was deliberately insulting, not alone his own white master, but every white master in the Solomons.  He insulted me.  He insulted Hughie.  He insulted Berande.”

“Of course, according to your lights, to your formula of the rule of the strong—­”