Concerning ''Bully'' Hayes, page 19 by Louis Becke
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es as supercargo.
We sailed from Milli Lagoon for the Kingsmill Group a week later, and visited nearly every island in the cluster, buying coco-nut oil and other produce from the natives and the few scattered white traders. At Arorai, the southernmost island of the group, we found the natives in a state of famine owing to a long and disastrous drought. The condition of these poor people was truly pitiable to see, and the tears came to my eyes when I saw them, scarcely able to stand, crawling over our bulwarks, and eagerly seizing the biscuits and dishes of boiled rice that Hayes gave them with an unstinting hand. They begged us most piteously to take them away somewhere--they cared not where, Samoa, Fiji or Queensland--where they could work on the plantations and at least get food. Five of them ate so voraciously, despite all our endeavours to prevent it, that they died the following day. On the following morning, Hayes called several of the head men of the island into his cabin, and told them that if they were willing, he would take one hundred of the people--men, women, and children--to the German trading station and plantation at Ponapé in the Caroline Islands. Here, he told them, they would have to work for three years for 5 dollars per month each. If, at the end of six months, they found that the Germans did not treat them well, he would bring them back again to their own island on his next voyage to Ponapé. They accepted his offer with the strongest protestations of gratitude, and before noon we sailed with over a hundred of the poor people on board. Before we left, however, Hayes gave the remainder of the population nearly a ton of rice and several casks of biscuits. "You can pay me when the sky of brass has broken and the rain falls, and the land is fertile once more," said the so-called pirate.
We made a quick passage to the Caroline Islands, touching at Kusaie or Strong's Island on our way, and on a Sunday evening swept into Jakoits Harbour on the island of Ponapé befo