title: The White Headhunter: The Story of a 19th-Century Sailor Who Survived a South Seas Heart of Darkness
author:  Nigel Randell 
description: First-time author Randell, a veteran British documentary filmmaker, demonstrates his skilled storytelling in this account of the life and times of Jack Renton, a teenage Scottish sailor who, in 1868, jumped ship near the Solomon Islands and was rescued by a tribe of headhunters from the Pacific island of Malaita. Combining a close reading of a biography of Renton published after he was found eight years later, oral histories from Malaitians and original research, Randell shows that Renton's story encompasses much more than the fact that "no white man had survived for such a length of time in a stone-age culture and no one had ever become so acculturated." He shows how the Malaitian culture was far more complex than the simple image of "headhunters" popularized after Renton's recovery, a society "where the relationship between the living and the dead was a life-long dialogue." Randell also shows that Renton airbrushed his own story to hide just how well he had adapted to his surroundings-killing and headhunting to survive and achieve acceptance among the Malaitians. The most fascinating and horrendous part of Randell's work, however, deals with "the onslaught of white civilization" into the Pacific after Renton's story, as well as that of Captain Cook, became popular-a "remorseless haemorrhaging of population" as thousands of Pacific islanders died from diseases brought by Christian missionaries and syphilis-wracked sailors. <br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  # Old Mary
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Louis Becke
  
  
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  * [I](omar_split_2.html#1_0_2)
  
  
  * [II](omar_split_3.html#1_0_3)
  
  
  * [III](omar_split_4.html#1_0_4)
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
      
  
  Produced by David Widger
  
  
  “OLD MARY”
  
  
  By Louis Becke
  
  
  T. Fisher Unwin, 1901
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### I
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Early one morning, just as the trade wind began to lift the white
  
  
  mountain mist which enveloped the dark valleys and mountain slopes of
  
  
  the island, Denison, the supercargo of the trading schooner _
  
  
  Palestine_, put off from her side and was pulled ashore to the house
  
  
  of the one white trader. The man's name was Handle, and as he heard the
  
  
  supercargo's footstep he came to the door and bade him good morning.
  
  
    
  “How are you, Randle?” said the young man, shaking hands with the
  
  
  quiet-voiced, white-haired old trader, and following him inside. “I'm
  
  
  going for a day's shooting while I have the chan