From The Solomons.

Captain Reardon Brings M.V.

Kurimarau to Sydney.

CAPTAIN J. E. Reardon, one of the leaders of the expedition which captured the murderers of District Commissioner Bell, Cadet Lillies, and a party of native police on the island of Malaita, in the Solomons, in 1927, reached Sydney on October 30, in com mand of the small copra motorship Kurimarau.

Officers of the vessel described how Captain Reardon had, single-handed, captured one of the ringleaders in the heart of a hostile country. The captain was chosen as a member of the expedi tion because of his knowledge of the country and of the six or seven native dialects. The further the party went into the jungle the more hostile was its reception. Captain Reardon, at first unable to break the silence of natives shielding their fellows, at last secured certain information upon which he acted promptly, thus securing the cap ture of one of the murderers.

The second officer of the Kurimarau, a native of Newcastle,, recalled an ad venture he had recently, when recruit ing labour at one of the smaller islands.

He was warned by friendly natives that he was likely to be murdered, and was requested to leave. He found later that a native girl who had been converted to Christianity had married a heathen.

Her relatives considered this a deadly sin, and ordered her brother to slay the couple. He had killed the girl, been arrested, sentenced, and hanged. The natives had blamed a white missionary, and had sworn to have their revenge on a white man. “I considered it un necessary to offer myself as their vic tim,” said the officer, ‘‘and left the island.”

The Kurimarau is a vessel new to Sydney. Built at Hongkong in 1930, the Kurimarau is of 288 tons gross, with a 330-horsepower Deutsch-Diesel engine, which gives her a speed of nine knots. She has come to Sydney for docking and overhaul, and brings a cargo of 230 tons of copra.

Three days before reaching Sydney the vessel struck a cyclone, the seas being higher than the chief officer (Mr.

R. O. Davis) remembers having seen before on the Australian coast. She was hove-to for three hours.

As most of the 18 native boys who form the crew had never before left their native Solomons, the rough weather upset them. They confessed in quaint English that they had not had a very good time in consequence. —“Sydney Morning Herald.”