JERRY OF THE ISLANDS


FOREWORD


It is a misfortune to some fiction-writers that fiction and unveracity in
the average person's mind mean one and the same thing. Several years ago
I published a South Sea novel. The action was placed in the Solomon
Islands. The action was praised by the critics and reviewers as a highly
creditable effort of the imagination. As regards reality--they said
there wasn't any. Of course, as every one knew, kinky-haired cannibals
no longer obtained on the earth's surface, much less ran around with
nothing on, chopping off one another's heads, and, on occasion, a white
man's head as well.

Now listen. I am writing these lines in Honolulu, Hawaii. Yesterday, on
the beach at Waikiki, a stranger spoke to me. He mentioned a mutual
friend, Captain Kellar. When I was wrecked in the Solomons on the
blackbirder, the _Minota_, it was Captain Kellar, master of the
blackbirder, the _Eugenie_, who rescued me. The blacks had taken Captain
Kellar's head, the stranger told me. He knew. He had represented
Captain Kellar's mother in settling up the estate.

Listen. I received a letter the other day from Mr. C. M. Woodford,
Resident Commissioner of the British Solomons. He was back at his post,
after a long furlough to England, where he had entered his son into
Oxford. A search of the shelves of almost any public library will bring
to light a book entitled, "A Naturalist Among the Head Hunters." Mr. C.
M. Woodford is the naturalist. He wrote the book.