The word appears 54 times.
The sailors call the islanders niggers, and talk about the inevitability of their contact (and domination) by the white man. In one section there is a battle where a group of islanders are recruited to work on plantations - but once they get on board the ship, attack, and are slaughtered by a marksman in the rigging. I could have just included the whole section.. but the gist is obvious. There is no respect what-so-ever for black men from the characters in this book. (Also note the use of the work pickaninnies.. another old derogatory slang)
While I was busy arguing and persuading the woolly-headed cannibals to come and labor on the Queensland plantations Otoo kept watch. And often and often his low voice warned me of suspicious actions and impending treachery. Sometimes it was the quick shot from his rifle, knocking a nigger over, that was the first warning I received. And in my rush to the boat his hand was always there to jerk me flying aboard.
I was just hailing for a boat when one of the woolly-heads began to scream. Holding on to the end of the canoe, both he and that portion of the canoe were dragged under several times. Then he loosed his clutch and disappeared. A shark had got him.
The three remaining niggers tried to climb out of the water upon the bottom of the canoe. I yelled and cursed and struck the nearest with my fies, but it was no use.
...
I abandoned the canoe and started to swim toward the schooner, expecting to be picked up by the boat before I got there. One of the niggers elected to come with me, and we swam along silently, side by side, now and again putting our faces into the water and peering about for sharks.
He must have a certain grand carelessness of odds, a certain colossal self-satisfaction, and a racial egotism that convinces him that one white is better than a thousand niggers every day of the week, and that on Sunday he is able to clean out two thousand niggers.
His name on the passenger list does not matter, but his other name, Captain Malu, was a name for niggers to conjure with, and to scare the naughty pickaninnies to righteousness from New Hanover to the New Hebrides.
"We haven't any show down here," was the skipper's complaint. "The government protects a nigger against a white every time. You can't shoot first. You've got to give the nigger the first shot, or else the government calls it murder and you go to Fiji. That's why there's so many drowning accidents."
"But is say, you know, I heard shot," Bertie said, in trembling eagerness, for the scented adventure, and adventure that was happily over with.
The mate whirled upon him, snarling.
"It's a damned lie. There ain't been a shot fired. The nigger fell overboard."
"Besides," said Mr. Jacobs, "there's altogether too many accidental drownings anyway. It don't look right. It's the fault of the government. A white man hasn't a chance to defend himself from the nigger."
"Yes, look at the Princess and that Yankee mate," the skipper took up the tale.
...
They were killed to the last man. .. A crowd of niggers came off from shore. First thing the mate knew, the boson and the crew were killed in the first rush. The mate grabbed three cartridge belts and two Winchesters and skinned up to the cross-trees. He was the sole survivor, and you can't blame him for getting mad. He pumped one rifle till it got so hot he couldn't hold it, then he pumped the other. The deck was black with niggers. "
Bertie did not see the bottl go off; but the mate opportunely discharged a stick of real dynamite aft where it would harm nobody, Bertie would have sworn in any admiralty court to a nigger blown to flinders.
...
All he knew was that the two men argued eloquently and at length as to whether the exploded nigger should be reported as a case of dysentery or as an accidental drowning.
"It being that I'm a married man, Mr. Harriwell, I can't very well afford to remain on longer. Trouble is working up as plain as the nose on your face. The niggers are going to break out, and there'll be another Hohono horror here."
"What's a Hohono horror?" Bertie asked after the storekeeper had been persuaded to remain until the end of the month.
"Oh he means Hohono Plantation, on Ysabel," said the manager. "The niggers killed the five white men ashore, captured the schooner, killed the captain and the mate, and escaped in a body to Malaita.
"What's the matter now?" the manager asked, after one look at the newcomer's face. "Is the river up again?"
"River be blowed -- it's the niggers.
...
"It does look serious," Harriwell admitted, "but we'll come through it all right. What the sanguinary niggers need is a shaking up. Will you gentlemen please bring your rifles to dinner, and will you, Mr. Brown, kindly prepare forty or fifty sticks of dynamite."
"I've seen a few who claimed they understood niggers," Captain Woodward retorted, "and I always took notice that they were the first to be kai-kai'd (eaten). Look at the missionaries in New Guinea and the New Hebrides--the martyr isle of Erromanga and all the rest. Look at the Austrian expedition that was cut to pieces in the Solomons, in the bush of Guadalcanal. And look at the traders themselves, with a score of years' experience, making their brag that no nigger would ever get them, and whose heads to this day are ornamenting the rafters of the canoe houses. There was old Johnny Simons--twenty-six years on the raw edges of Melanesia, swore he knew the niggers like a book and that they'd never do for him, and he passed out at Marovo Lagoon, New Georgia, had his head sawed off by a black Mary (woman) and an old nigger with only one leg, having left the other leg in the mouth of a shark while diving for dynamited fish. There was Billy Watts, horrible reputation as a nigger killer, a man to scare the devil. I remember lying at Cape Little, New Ireland you know, when the niggers stole half a case of trade-tobacco--cost him about three dollars and a half. In retaliation he turned out, shot six niggers, smashed up their war canoes and burned two villages. And it was at Cape Little, four years afterward, that he was jumped along with fifty Buku boys he had with him fishing bche-de-mer. In five minutes they were all dead, with the exception of three boys who got away in a canoe. Don't talk to me about understanding the nigger. The white man's mission is to farm the world, and it's a big enough job cut out for him. What time has he got left to understand niggers anyway?" "I've seen a few who claimed they understood niggers," Captain Woodward retorted, "and I always took notice that they were the first to be kai-kai'd (eaten). Look at the missionaries in New Guinea and the New Hebrides--the martyr isle of Erromanga and all the rest. Look at the Austrian expedition that was cut to pieces in the Solomons, in the bush of Guadalcanal. And look at the traders themselves, with a score of years' experience, making their brag that no nigger would ever get them, and whose heads to this day are ornamenting the rafters of the canoe houses. There was old Johnny Simons--twenty-six years on the raw edges of Melanesia, swore he knew the niggers like a book and that they'd never do for him, and he passed out at Marovo Lagoon, New Georgia, had his head sawed off by a black Mary (woman) and an old nigger with only one leg, having left the other leg in the mouth of a shark while diving for dynamited fish. There was Billy Watts, horrible reputation as a nigger killer, a man to scare the devil. I remember lying at Cape Little, New Ireland you know, when the niggers stole half a case of trade-tobacco--cost him about three dollars and a half. In retaliation he turned out, shot six niggers, smashed up their war canoes and burned two villages. And it was at Cape Little, four years afterward, that he was jumped along with fifty Buku boys he had with him fishing bche-de-mer. In five minutes they were all dead, with the exception of three boys who got away in a canoe. Don't talk to me about understanding the nigger. The white man's mission is to farm the world, and it's a big enough job cut out for him. What time has he got left to understand niggers anyway?"
"Just so," said Roberts. "And somehow it doesn't seem necessary, after all, to understand the niggers. In direct proportion to the white man's stupidity is his success in farming the world --"
"And putting the fear of God into the nigger's heart," Captain Woodward blurted out. "Perhaps you're right, Robers. Perhaps it's his stupidity that makes him succeed, and surely one phase of his stupidity is his inability to understand the niggers. But there's one thing sure, the white has to run the niggers whether he understands them or not. It's inevitable. It's fate.
"And of course the white man is inevitable -- it's the niggers' fate," Roberts broke in.
"I'm wondering what the niggers of Malu thought and still must be thinking of the one inevitable white man we had on board when we visited them on the Duchess," he explained.
"There weren't any government protection for US, either. It was rough work, give and take, if we were finished, and nothing said, and we ran niggers from every south see island the didn't kick us off from.
"There's a shore reef and an outer reef, and a mighty nervous anchorage; but we made it all right and fired off our dynamite as a signal to the niggers to come down and be recruited. In three days we got not a boy. The niggers came off to us in their canoes by hundreds, but they only laughed when we showed them beads and calico and hatchets and talked of the delights of plantation work on Samoa.
...
And, as usual, the fifty niggers on board were on deck, loafing, talking, smoking, and sleeping. Saxtorph and myself, along with four other sailors, were all that were left on board.
...
I caught a glimpse of the sailor who was standing guard. Two big niggers were holding his arms, and a third nigger from behind was braining him with a tomahawk.
...
The niggers held him up by sheer strength while he was hacked a couple of times more.
"I had a dim notion of escaping, and I crawled on hands and knees to the winch, where I manage to drag myself to my feet. From there I could look aft and see three heads on top the cabin -- the heads of three sailors I had given order to for months. The niggers saw me standing, and started for me. I reached for my revolver, and found they had taken it."
...
"The leading nigger had armed himself with a cleaver from the galley, and he grimaced like and ape as he prepared to slice me down. But the slice was never made. He went down on the deck all of a heap, and I saw blood gush from his mouth. In a dim way I heard a rifle to off and continue to go off. Nigger after nigger went down. My senses began to clear, and I noted that there was never a miss. Every time that rifle when off a nigger dropped. I sat down on the deck beside the winch and looked up. Perched in the cross trees was Saxtorph.
...
Bang, bang, bang, bang, went his rifle, and thud, thud, thud, thud went the niggers to the deck. It was amazing to see them go down.
...
The fusillade they let loose on Saxtorph was tremendous. Luckily for him the niggers were only good at close range.
...
It was the swiftness of it that made the slaughter so appalling. The niggers did not have time to think.
...
"The niggers spread out and headed for shore, swimming. The water was carpeted with bobbing heads, and I stood up, as in a dream, and watched it all -- the bobbing heads and the heads that ceased to bob. Some of the long shots were magnificent. Only one man reached the beach, but as he stood up to wade ashore, Saxtorph got him. It was beautiful. And when a couple of niggers ran down to drag him out of the water, Saxtorph got them, too.
"I thought everything was over then, when I heard the rifle go off again. A nigger had come out of the cabin companion on the run for the rail and gone down the middle of it.
I lay in the shade, brushing flies off and directing operations, while Saxtorph bossed his hospital gang. I'll be blessed if he didn't make those poor niggers heave at every rope on the pin rails before he found the halyards.
"Our decks were a spectacle. Dead and dying niggers were everywhere. They were wedged away some of them in the most inconceivable places. ... The sharks had fat pickings that day. ... Of course, our four murdered sailors went the same way. Their heads, however, we put in a sack with weights, so that by no chance should they drift on the beach and fall into the hands of the niggers.
Anyway, the DUCHESS lay hove to for three weeks, when I pulled myself together and we jogged on with her to Sydney. Anyway, those niggers of Malu learned and everlasting lesson that it is not good to monkey with a white man. In their case Saxtorph was certainly inevitable.