[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

CHAPTER XIII

AOBA

NEXT day I landed in Aoba, at “Albert’s.” He was
an American negro, who, after having been a stoker
and sailor, had settled here as a coprah trader. His
language was of the strangest, a mixture of biche la
mar, negro French and English, and was very hard
to understand. With the help of two native women
he kept his house in good order, and he was
decidedly one of the most decent colonists of the
group, and tried to behave like a gentleman, which is
more than can be said of some whites. He seemed
to confirm the theory that the African is superior to
the Melanesian. Albert sheltered me to the best of
his ability, although I had to sleep in the open, under
a straw roof, and his bill of fare included items which
neither my teeth nor my stomach could manage, such
as an octopus. There were several other negroes
in Aoba; one was Marmaduke, an enormous
Senegalese, who had grown somewhat simple, and
lived like the natives, joining the Suque and dancing
at their festivals. He occasionally came to dinner at
Albert’s; this was always amusing, 'as Albert thought
himself far superior to Marmaduke, and corrected
his mistakes with still more comical impossibilities.

Both were most polite and perfectly sober. The
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