After he left Wainoni, the Gammon Man, it took Kella over an hour to reach the saltwater village of Tabuna. He paddled several miles down the Lau Lagoon, between the artificial islands, then made a detour and dragged his canoe up on to the beach a mile to the north of his destination. He hurried into the coastal fringe of trees, so that he would not be observed from the open sea. As soon as he had rounded the headland in his canoe, he had noticed the government vessel at anchor outside the reef. From a distance it looked like the Commissioner, forty feet long, with six cabins and space for eighty deck passengers. Every three months it made a heavily subsidized seven-day trip to the tiny remote island of Tikopia, carrying essential supplies for the Polynesian inhabitants there. Throughout the Solomons, government vessels competed with commercial ones for freight cargoes, generally a source of dismay to the Chinese traders. However, no private vessels wanted the dangerous and unproductive Tikopian run.
