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                           THREE SAILOR BOYS

                                   OR

                        _Adrift in the Pacific_



                                   BY
                  VERNEY LOVETT CAMERON, C.B., D.C.L.
                          COMMANDER ROYAL NAVY

             _Author of “Jack Hooper,” “Among the Turks,”_
                         _“In Savage Africa,”_
                               _&c., &c._


                             [Illustration]


                         THOMAS NELSON AND SONS
                   _London, Edinburgh, and New York_

                                  1902




                                Contents

                I. THE RUNAWAYS,                               9
               II. IN HIDING,                                 18
              III. ADRIFT,                                    26
               IV. ON A CORAL ISLAND,                         36
                V. FISH-CURING,                               46
               VI. A VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION,                   54
              VII. BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY,                    64
             VIII. A NARROW ESCAPE,                           75
               IX. PURSUED BY CANNIBALS,                      87
                X. A DESPERATE STRUGGLE,                      98
               XI. BRISTOL BOB,                              109
              XII. A SAD EVENT,                              120
             XIII. IN CAPTIVITY,                             131
              XIV. A DIVE FOR LIBERTY,                       142




[Illustration: “_We bent to our oars with all our strength._” Page
10.]




                         ADRIFT IN THE PACIFIC.




                               CHAPTER I.
                             THE RUNAWAYS.


“Look out, boys, or we shall never fetch the ship again!”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Matter enough; we’re ever so far from her, and there’s a storm brewing.
Just look to the westward and see what a bank the sun is setting in.”

Sure enough, a lurid, red sun was setting in a bank of heavy, black
clouds, which had already obscured his lower half, and the surface of
which was flecked with little, white, fleecy dots, moving rapidly, which
looked as if the port-holes of some giant craft had been opened and her
guns fired.

In an open boat were I, Sam Hawse, and the two speakers, my companions,
Tom Arbor and Bill Seaman, and a mile and a half or two miles away lay a
ship with her upper sails furled, courses hauled up, and topsails
lowered on the cap, while the surface of the sea was like glass, though
a long, heavy swell was rolling up from the westward, heralding the
approach of the storm of which the clouds pointed out by Tom Arbor were
the visible harbingers.

The ship was the _Golden Fleece_, a clipper barque; and we were three
boys belonging to her, and had on this the third day of continuous and
stark calms been sent away to try our hands at turning a turtle, of
which some had been seen floating on the surface, and had already been
successful in securing two; and going on in search of others, we had got
farther from the _Golden Fleece_ than either we wished or intended.

“See there,” continued Tom; “it’s all hands aboard the barky. The
skipper he sees what’s coming, and ain’t a-goin’ to be caught napping.
Come, we must give way and get aboard as soon as we may; he’ll be in no
pleasant temper, and the mate or bos’n will give us a rope’s-ending for
supper.”

Besides the fear of the reception which awaited us, we saw the truth of
what Tom said, and bent to our oars with all our strength.

Before, however, we had covered half the distance which lay between us
and the _Golden Fleece_, the clouds had risen and obscured the heavens,
and we could feel faint, chill puffs of air fanning our cheeks.

“Give way, lads,” cried Tom, who was pulling stroke, “or we shall never
reach her; and in a cockle-shell like this we can never live out a storm
such as is coming on.”

Bill and I needed no urging, and if possible pulled harder than before;
but suddenly Tom’s oar broke in half, and he fell on his back in the
bottom of the boat.

Bill, astonished at this, let go his oar, and it fell overboard and
drifted astern.

As soon as Tom regained his seat, we looked round for the ship, and saw
that she was paying off before the wind with a fore-staysail set, and
that, even if we had our oars, there would be small hope of our reaching
her, while to windward we could see the rain coming down on us like a
wall.

“Well, lads, we’re in a fix now,” said Tom; “give me your oar, Sam, and
I’ll see if I can scull back to pick up Bill’s oar.”

“Not much use in that; the rain will be on us in five minutes, and we
shall be able to see nothing,” I said; and almost as I spoke, a flash of
lightning seemed to strike the water in our immediate vicinity, and was
instantly followed by a crash of thunder, which sounded as if heaven and
earth were coming to an end.

“Out with your knives, quick, and cut the sails loose, and get the lug
over the bows fast to the painter; we may ride to it, while I keep her
bows on with the oar,” (our only remaining one), cried Tom.

Indeed, this was our only chance, for the rain was upon us and the
lightning was flashing all around us; and in less time than it takes to
tell of it, Tom and I had the sail over the bows, and bent on to the
painter with the tack, and weighted by the leads of some fishing-lines,
which were fortunately in the boat.

By the time this was finished, the ship was hidden from our sight by the
storm; and soon the freshness of the rain turned to salt from the spray
driven by the wind, and the full force and fury of the storm fell on us.

Fortunately the sea did not get up rapidly, being kept down by the
strength of the wind, and Tom managed to keep us bows on, and our
hastily-extemporized sea-anchor prevented it from breaking over us; but
Bill and I had all our work cut out to bail out the water, which we did
with a bailer and bucket that were by good-luck in the boat.

After about two hours, as it must have been, though to us it seemed much
longer, the storm abated, leaving a nasty, confused sea; but we were
able to keep the boat afloat and fairly dry, though the long, dark night
was most dreary.

At last the day began to dawn, and when the sun rose the clouds
dispersed and the sea got calmer by degrees. Our first anxiety was to
look for the _Golden Fleece_, and we eagerly scanned the horizon for
some signs of her; but not a sail was to be seen, and we three lads were
alone in an open boat on the wide ocean.

Before going any farther I may as well describe the three occupants of
the boat, and say who we were. Tom Arbor, as the eldest, should stand
first. He was about seventeen years of age, and was strong built and
active. Like Seaman and myself, he was an orphan and the son of a sailor
drowned at sea. His mother had brought him up to the best of her
ability, and would have kept him with her, and opposed his following in
his father’s footsteps and going to sea with her utmost power; but she
could no more prevail with him than a hen who has sat upon ducks’ eggs
can stop her brood from taking to the nearest water by clucking.
Accordingly, when but twelve years of age, he had stowed himself away on
board a ship bound round the Horn to California; and, not being found
till long after the pilot had left, had made the voyage, and, the
skipper being a kindly man, had been well treated. When he came home he
had found his mother married again to a small shopkeeper, and she no
longer said a word against his being a sailor; and he had made a voyage
to China and back before shipping on board the _Golden Fleece_, about
six months before. He was a cheerful, good-natured lad, with dark-brown
hair and eyes, and was certainly for his years a good sailor, and could
hand, reef, and steer, splice a rope, and pull an oar as well as many
who were longer at sea and older in years.

Bill Seaman had been picked up on the sea-shore when about two years
old, and was supposed to be the only survivor from the wreck of a large
ship, in which it was thought his father had been lost; but no means had
come to hand to establish who his father was, and he had, by the
interest of some of the gentry living near where he was found, been
brought up in an establishment for the orphans of sailors till it was
closed, and he was sent to a workhouse. He was a clever, bright boy, but
small for his age.

My mother had died when I was born, and when the ship in which my father
was an A.B. came home, the news was given to an aunt of my mother’s who
had taken charge of me that he had fallen off the fore-topsail yard off
Cape Horn in a winter gale and been drowned; so my old relative, the
only one I ever knew, had obtained admission for me into the same asylum
as Seaman; and as she died soon after, I was as destitute of friends or
relations as he was. In this asylum we continued till about the age of
seven, when from one cause or another it was closed, and Seaman and
myself were sent to a workhouse.

Here our life was by no means a happy one, and two or three times we ran
away and tried to get taken as boys on board ships sailing from the
sea-port near which the workhouse was; but no one would take us, as we
were too small and young, and we were always caught and taken back to
the workhouse, where we were flogged and severely punished for our
attempts to escape.

As may be imagined, our repeated attempts to escape did not cause our
treatment to be any better; so, after the last time we were brought
back, when we had undergone our punishment, Bill and I consulted
together and agreed—we were only twelve at the time—that we should
wait until we were two years older, when we hoped to be big and strong
enough to be accepted by some captain, and then to make another try for
freedom.

During these two years we did all in our power to be considered good
boys, and with some success, and applied ourselves to learning the
trades which were taught us, Bill being taught shoemaking, while I was
instructed in carpentering; and at the end of these two years we had
both made some progress.

Our intention of going to sea, however, never left us, though our good
conduct caused us to be treated more kindly than had hitherto been the
case; but I must say that our instructors punished us for any mistakes
or carelessness most severely, though of this we did not take much
notice, for we saw equal measure served out to all our companions, and
never for a moment doubted that it was part and parcel of the necessary
teaching.

When we were about fourteen we were both called before the guardians,
who spoke to us kindly, and said that it was their intention to
apprentice us to our respective trades, for which we had shown great
aptitude, and that in about a week or so we should be bound over to the
masters who had been chosen for us.

When we left the board-room I said to Seaman that the time had come for
us to try to run away to sea again, for if we were bound apprentice,
which, I know not why, among us and our comrades was looked upon as a
dreadful thing, we should never be able to get away, and in any case we
should be separated.

He quite agreed with me, and we made up our minds to get away the next
night. Our dormitory was on the first floor, and had a long range of
windows, guarded by iron bars, which overlooked a narrow lane leading
down into a part of the town composed of sailors’ lodging-houses, and
along which scarcely any one passed after dark.

The bars of the windows had only lately been put in order by the boys in
the carpenter’s shop, and with a screw-driver one could be easily
removed, so that we could get through and cut away the lead of the
windows.

Bill promised me that he would manage to get a shoemaker’s knife to cut
the lead, while I had to procure a screw-driver, which I did without
being noticed.

Next night, when the occupants of the dormitory were all sound asleep,
we set about our work, and while Bill got the cord which stretched the
sacking of our beds to lower ourselves into the lane, I unscrewed the
bars and cut the lead framing away.

Some of the other boys were disturbed by the noise; but we were amongst
the biggest and strongest, and by threats and persuasion managed to
prevent them giving the alarm until the last moment, when, leaving
behind us the knife and screw-driver and all our clothes but our shirts
and trousers, for we did not wish to be considered thieves as well as
runaways, we slid down the rope, and on reaching the bottom scudded away
as fast as we could towards the nearest seamen’s haunt.




                              CHAPTER II.
                               IN HIDING.


We soon heard people in pursuit of us, and their shouts roused the
people in the houses near, and sailors and boarding-house keepers came
out into the streets and alleys to see what the commotion was all about.

We ran on blindly, dodging some who would have stopped us, and not
knowing where to look for safety and shelter, when a great, burly fellow
in a crimson waistcoat and fur cap seized us by the collars and stayed
our progress.

“Whither bound, you rascals?” he said.

“Oh, please, sir, we’ve left the workhouse, and want to go to sea,” we
panted out.

“Come along,” he said, and shoved us before him into a gloomy court, and
then into a door, and after that through passages, some dark and some
dimly lighted, and up and down broken and slippery stairs, until at last
we came into a small room, which was lighted by a couple of tallow
candles stuck into bottles. On one side was a bunk like a ship’s, and in
the middle a deal table, on which were a bottle and glasses.

“There,” said our guide; “I don’t think the beadles’ll catch you now.
’Twould puzzle them to find their way here. Now, let’s have a look at
you, and see whether you’re worth keeping, or ’twould pay best to get a
reward for taking you back.”

“Oh, don’t take us back,” we cried, for though the appearance of our
companion was not calculated to inspire confidence, we knew that we
should be severely punished if we were taken back to the workhouse, and
that the chance of getting to sea would be farther off from us than
ever.

“Stow that,” he said. “First and foremost, how old are ye, and what can
ye do?”

“Please, sir, our names are Bill Seaman and Sam Hawse, and we can do
shoemaking and carpentering, and we’re fourteen.”

“A snab and a chips. Which is which? Now, one at a time. Seaman, what
are you?”

“I’ve learned shoemaking, sir.”

“And you, Hawse, are a carpenter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you seems likely, and I’ll keep you a day or two. Come along with
me,” and opening a door he went into a long room, at one end of which
was a sort of stage, where a man was roaring out a song to the
accompaniment of an old fiddler, and which was full of sailors drinking
and smoking and eating.

In one corner of this room was a narrow staircase, up which our
conductor took us, and after passing through rooms full of beds, up
other flights of stairs, and along passages, we came at last to a small
den or cupboard, whose sloping ceiling told us it was close under the
roof. Here the man with the red waistcoat told us we could sleep, and
giving us a blanket to wrap ourselves in, shut and locked the door,
leaving us in the dark.

Bill and I were too frightened to say much, so we rolled ourselves up in
the blanket as best we might, and tried to sleep.

Next day we feared we had been forgotten, for we heard all sorts of
noises below us, but no one came near us, and we began to think we had
done a very foolish thing in running away, as in the workhouse, though
the food was not always to our taste, still there was enough, and it
came at regular hours.

We tried to attract attention by hammering at the door and shouting, and
when that was of no avail we tried to find some means of getting out;
but we could not find any, for the whole of the place was carefully
boarded.

At last we heard voices and footsteps outside, and the man with the red
waistcoat opened the door and said to some one who accompanied him:
“There, you can lie hid there till she’s sailed; it’s the snuggest stow
in the place. Why,” said he in astonishment, “there’s them two kids.
Blow my eyes, I’d forgotten them. D’ye think your old man would give
anything for them?”

The newcomer, who was a sailor of a somewhat forbidding aspect, said, “I
shouldn’t wonder; boys is useful. He might give a sov. or two for the
pair, and what with kit and advances, as he calls it, make ’em work the
v’yge for nought.”

“That’ll do; when d’ye say the _Golden Fleece_ sails?”

“Why, she’s hauled out of dock, and sails next tide.”

“But won’t he wait for hands? How many of you have run?”

“Some half-dozen.”

“So that’s it; I can give him the men and these boys too.”

“Don’t give me up.”

“No, you dunderhead; you’re worth more ashore than afloat. How many
advance notes have you cashed in a month?”

“Five.”

“Well, that does me well enough.”

The newcomer took our place in the cupboard, but he was supplied with
food and drink and a light, which had not been granted to us; and the
man with the red waistcoat told us to follow him.

I said, “Please, sir, give us something to eat.”

“Bless me, you must be hungry,” he said. “I’d clean forgotten you. Now
come along, and you shall have a blow-out.”

We followed the man down to a sort of kitchen in a cellar, where three
or four women were at work, and he told them to give us something to
eat.

A tin dish full of broken victuals was given to us, and we were told to
sit in a corner and eat it.

Whilst we were doing so, the women occasionally came and laughed at us
for the way we devoured our food; but seeing how hungry we were, when
the first dishful was finished they gave us more.

At last our hunger was appeased; and then we were made to help as best
we could these women, who told us they were the cooks of the place,
which was one of the largest seamen’s lodging-houses in the place, and
was kept by the man in the red waistcoat, whose name was Crump.

In the kitchen we passed the day, but about dusk we were sent for to Mr.
Crump’s sanctum, where we found him and a decently-dressed, sailor-like
man whom he called Captain Haxell, but whose face looked like some bird
of prey, his eyes were so sharp and dark and his nose so hooked and
pointed.

“There are the lads now, captain,” said Mr. Crump, as the kitchen
wenches had told us to call him, “and I think you’ll find them smart and
handy.”

“Stand up, and let’s see you,” said the captain. “So you wish to go to
sea? Where are your friends? Got none, d’ye say? Stow that. Now, your
names.”

We told him our names, and he answered, “Pursers’ names both, you young
rascals; but, come now, I admire spirit in lads, and though there’s some
risk, I’ll take you as ’prentices.—Got any ’prentice forms, Crump?”

“Yes, captain,” answered that worthy, and produced two sheets of paper
on which was some writing, which Captain Haxell told us to sign, and
which he put in his pocket.

After this Crump took us to another room, where were sailors’ slops of
all kinds, and gave us each a blue shirt and trousers, cap, and jacket.

We put them on, and asked for the shirts and trousers we took off to be
sent back to the workhouse, as it would not be honest to keep them.

Mr. Crump gave a grin, and said our wishes should be attended, which
made us very happy, for the idea of stealing even the shirts and
trousers had been weighing heavy on our mind; but I am now afraid that
the workhouse authorities never saw those trousers or shirts again.

Captain Haxell, when we returned, said, “Ah! that’s the style, my young
sailors.—Now, Mr. Crump, how about the men?”

“All right, captain; I’ve them handy, and a wagon to take them and their
chests down, and the lads too.”

Mr. Crump went out, and soon a certain amount of noise was heard in the
passage outside the little den where we were, as if heavy things were
being carried along, and then when it was quiet again Mr. Crump came in
and said, “All ready, captain. Now, pay me.”

“Oh, I’ll pay you on board; come along of me.”

“No, I’m too old a bird for that; I’m not going to be paid with the
fore-topsail. Pay down here, or not a soul leaves.”

Captain Haxell tried persuasion, and said he had left all his money
aboard, and to go to the ship and come back would cause him to lose a
tide.

“Can’t help that,” said Crump. “Pay or leave; them’s my words.”

At last, seeing that Mr. Crump was obdurate, Captain Haxell took a
pocket-book out of his breast-pocket, and handed over some banknotes.

“There, that’s right—honest seaman and no fraud,” said Crump. “Now have
a glass before you start,” and, suiting the action to the word, he
filled a couple of tumblers from a bottle that stood on the table.

The two worthies drank together, and then Captain Haxell, telling us to
follow him, left the room and went to a sort of yard, where a covered
wagon with a horse ready harnessed to it was waiting.

“Tumble in,” said our captain, for so we now must call him, and
accordingly we clambered up into the hind part, and found it lumbered
with sea-chests and drunken or drugged men; while Captain Haxell,
mounting the box, told the driver to go to the water-side.

Here we found a boat waiting, into which we had to get, and to assist in
placing the men and other contents of the wagon in her.

The boat pulled off to a ship lying some little distance out with her
topsails loosed, and when we arrived alongside men and chests were
hoisted in, and we scrambled up as well as we could.

Captain Haxell, as soon as the boat was clear, called to the mate to
hoist the topsails, brace the yards abox, and weigh.

The orders and the noise seemed confusing enough to both Bill and me,
and we were shoved and hustled about, and blamed for being useless, and
also for being in the way; but at last the ship was under way, and we
were standing off the land with all sails set.




                              CHAPTER III.
                                ADRIFT.


The night was cold and chill, and a drizzling rain was falling, which
speedily wet us through, as Bill and I stood on the deck, not knowing
where to go or what to do.

The drunken men and their chests were all taken down into the
forecastle; but when we attempted to follow, we were told to stay on
deck and do our work, though what that work was proved a mystery to us.

Seeing men coiling up ropes and hanging them on to belaying pins, we
tried to do the same, but only got cuffs and blows for doing it wrong;
so we sheltered ourselves under the long-boat, thinking that if this was
going to sea, it would have been much better to have remained in the
workhouse to become a carpenter and a shoemaker.

Here we cowered away during the long and dreary night, and to add to our
discomfort, the ship being close to the wind, bobbing into a choppy
head-sea, we became dreadfully seasick.

At last daylight came, and we were found and routed out of our refuge,
and brought before the mate who had the morning watch.

“Hallo! Who are you, and where did you come from?” he shouted.

We stood sillily before him, and answered, “Please, sir, we’re the two
apprentices Captain Haxell brought off last night.”

“Apprentices! I never heard of our old man having apprentices before;
but where’s your kit, and the rest?”

“Kit, sir—what’s that?”

“Your chests, beds, clothes, you greenhorns.”

“Please, sir, we’ve only what we’ve got on.”

“Well, I don’t know what to do. I’ll see the captain when he comes on
deck. Here, what are your names?”

When we told him, the mate said: “Well, Hawse, you are starboard watch;
and, Seaman, you are port watch. Hawse, your watch below; Seaman, on
deck.”

All this was Greek to us, but one of the men, in obedience to the mate,
put a swab into Bill’s hand, and told him to dry the deck, while I was
left alone. I was standing amidships, wondering at what was going on and
what would become of us, when I felt a hand laid on my shoulder, and a
voice, the first with a tone of kindness in it that I had heard on
board, saying, “What cheer, shipmate?”

Looking round, I saw a boy with a good-humoured smile on his face.

“Oh,” I said, “what am I to do, and where can I go?”

“Why, you must do what you’re told. Did you stowaway on board in dock?”

“Not I. I and Bill there,” pointing to him, “are apprentices, and came
on board last night with the captain.”

“Apprentices are you? Where are your chests and hammocks? Got nothing
but what you stand up in? You’re funny ’prentices, and I don’t think the
old man is likely to have ’prentices bound to him, from what I can see
since I’ve been aboard of the hooker.”

When I explained to the speaker, who told me his name was Tom Arbor, and
that he had shipped two days before the ship sailed, how we had come
aboard, he laughed heartily, and said, “You’re no ’prentices. The old
man maybe wanted boys for something or other, and he took you. Never
mind, I’ll do what I can for you both.”

Our conversation was interrupted by the captain coming on deck, and
calling for us. “Now, my brave sailor-boys, how d’ye like the sea?”

Captain Haxell, as he spoke, looked even more like a bird of prey than
he had the day before, and though his words were cheery, there was
something in the way he said them which chilled us with fear.

I, however, plucked up courage, and asked where we were to live, and for
some dry clothes.

“Clothes, you workhouse brats; let them dry on you. Now you’ve got to
work before you eat. Here,” catching hold of me by the ear, “you go to
the steward, and say he said he wanted a boy, and I’ve got him one; and
you”—to Bill—“go to the cook for his mate.”

We were told off thus roughly to our duties, and forewarned that those
under whom we had to work were worse tyrants than any we had had to do
with in the workhouse, but that they were kindness itself when compared
with the captain and mate.

Indeed from no one on board did we receive any kindness, except from Tom
Arbor, and he himself had to undergo much ill-treatment. We often longed
to be back at the workhouse again, for there we were sure of our night’s
rest, and of sufficient food, while if we were treated severely, we had
not to suffer from actual cruelty.

After leaving England we were at sea four or five months, and had during
the latter part to suffer from thirst; for our supply of water was but
scanty, and Bill and I were always the last served, and sometimes had to
go without.

Notwithstanding rough treatment and thirst, we were fortunate enough to
keep our health; and when we first anchored, which was at one of the
coral islands in the Pacific, we were so delighted with all that we saw
of scenery and people—all was so strange, new, and wonderful—that we
thought little of the pains and hardships we had undergone.

Soon, however, we found that even delightful scenery and climate do not
make up all that is necessary for enjoyment, and that sailing among
lovely islands, especially when one never has a chance of putting a foot
ashore, is but a poor compensation for blows and ill-treatment.

We soon found that Captain Haxell traded with the people of the islands
on very peculiar principles. Indeed, often many of his acts were sheer
robbery and piracy, and though often Tom Arbor consulted with Bill
Seaman and myself as to the possibility of running away, we were afraid
to trust ourselves among the natives, lest they should avenge upon us
the wrongs they received at the hands of our shipmates.

So matters went on, until the day when this story commences. Certainly
we had learned some amount of seamanship, and were better able to look
after ourselves than when we had left England; but I hope and trust that
it may never again fall to the lot of English boys to undergo such
ill-treatment as we constantly received. One comfort we had, and one
alone, and that was that Tom Arbor had been religiously brought up, and
taught where to look for consolation, and showed us how the Christianity
we had heard of in the workhouse was a real and beautiful thing, instead
of, as we had regarded it, simply one of the subjects of the workhouse
school.

As soon as we found that there was no ship in sight, Tom proposed that
we should pray for help and guidance, and if our prayers were offered up
in rough and untutored language, they were as true and fervent as most
that are made in church.

When our prayers were finished, we began to overhaul the boat, to find
what we had aboard of her. Fortunately she had constantly been employed
in trading, and her trade-box, arms, and all other gear belonging to her
were on board, except the oars, which had unfortunately been taken out,
just before we were sent in chase of the turtle, to be overhauled, and
only the three spoken of above had been passed into her before the boat
was lowered, and of these three, as will now be remembered, only one
remained.

We found we had the mainmast and a dipping lug, as well as a small
triangular mizzen, and we at once shipped the masts, and made sail to a
light breeze from the westward; and then, with Bill Seaman steering, Tom
Arbor and I opened the trade-box. On the lid we found a sheet of paper,
on which was written the contents, which mainly consisted of gaudy
beads, brass wire, flints and steels, small hatchets and knives, and
also a book, in which had been entered what had been expended, and how
much had been replaced, and in which there were many blank sheets. There
was also a bottle of ink and a pen, so Tom said we could keep a log of
our proceedings.

When we found that the list and trade-book agreed with the contents of
the chest, we looked to see what were in the lockers, which were fitted
under the stern sheets; and in them we found about four pounds of
pigtail tobacco—which, as none of us had ever taken to smoking, we
determined to keep for trade, knowing how fond the natives were of
it—six and a half ship biscuits, a piece of boiled salt pork weighing
about a pound, a bottle of rum, two cooked yams, two pistols, a large
packet of ammunition, some gun flints, a flask of priming powder, a bag
with needles and thread, and some tin plates, pannikins, and spoons.

Lashed under the thwarts were four muskets in tarpaulin covers, and
there were three small beakers or casks, one of which was half full of
fresh water, a couple of balls of spun yarn, two fishing-lines and
hooks, and a lead and line.

When we had completed our search, Tom said, “Well, my boys, we may be
thankful to have so much. Many a poor fellow has been adrift in a boat
without bite or sup, while what we have here, with these two turtles,
may last us some days; and before it is all finished, we may fall in
with an island or a ship.”

Bill and I said we were both hungry and thirsty, and proposed to make a
meal off the pork and biscuits; but Tom said that they would keep, and
that we had better kill one of the turtles and live on its flesh.

One was accordingly killed and cut up by Tom, and he gave us each a
piece of flesh to eat; but hungry as we were we could not stomach the
idea of eating it raw, and so we all began to cast about for some means
of cooking our ration.

We had means of making fire, and the bottom boards would supply us with
fuel, but what were we to use as a stove or fireplace? This puzzled us
for some time, but at last a bright idea entered into my head. “Why
couldn’t we fill the shell of the turtle with water, and out of the
hoops of the bucket make a grating on which we could light a fire?”

“That may be,” said Tom; “but suppose we want the bucket for bailing
again? That won’t do.”

“But let us look again in the trade-box. Perhaps there may be something
there,” I answered.

“I have it,” said Bill. “I quite forgot; but I remember a day or two ago
I was told to put some old cask hoops in the boat, and they are under
the head sheets.”

Looking where he said, we found the hoops he mentioned, and before long
we made a sort of fireplace, which we stood in the turtle shell, and
splitting up one of the bottom boards with our knives we made a fire,
over which we after a fashion cooked our turtle meat, which we washed
down with a pannikin of water.

When we had finished our meal, Tom said, “Now we had best try to make
some sort of paddles. There’s the loom of the broken oar and the
boathook. If we fix some of the bottom boards across them, they will
answer until we can arrange something better.”

No sooner said than done; and I, as carpenter, managed by dint of hard
work before the night fell to fashion a couple of paddles, which if
somewhat clumsy were at all events better than nothing. Whilst I was
employed about this, Tom and Bill had taken turns in steering, and in
cutting up the turtle, the second of which was also killed and cut into
thin strips, which they hung on a piece of spun yarn stretched between
the two masts; and when that was finished, they had cleaned the muskets
and seen that they were fit for use.

At sunset, Tom, who without any talk or election had been made our
captain, said we had better lower our sail, as otherwise we might run by
or upon land in the darkness, as many of the coral islands were but a
few feet above the surface of the water, and only visible from the
cocoanut palms growing on them.

We accordingly lowered the lug, leaving the mizzen set to keep us head
to wind and sea, and arranging that we should watch in turns. The two
who were watch below rolled themselves up in the sail, Bill remarking
that it was better than the _Golden Fleece_, where at the best it was
watch and watch, and often watch and watch on, whereas now we were in
three watches.

The morning watch fell to my lot, and just before the sun rose I saw
away on the eastern horizon a line of spots which looked like the sails
of ships, but which by this time I had learned were cocoanut palms on a
coral island.

I instantly called my companions, and it being a dead calm, after we had
made a breakfast, at which, as land was in sight, Tom allowed us half a
biscuit apiece, we got out our paddles and commenced to pull in the
direction in which I had seen the tops of the trees.




                              CHAPTER IV.
                           ON A CORAL ISLAND.


“Fortunately for us it is calm,” said Tom, when, after two or three
hours’ paddling, Seaman and myself began to complain that the land
seemed to remain as far away as ever. “Never mind; pull on my boys,”
said Tom.

“Why so, Tom?” I asked.

“Can’t you see how as we’ve been having the south-east trades regular
till about a week ago; and they may set in again at any time, and then
instead of creeping toward land, we should be blown away to leeward?”

Certainly Tom Arbor was right, and that we might soon expect the trades
to be blowing from their accustomed quarter was evident by the long
swell which was rolling up from the south-east; and the idea of being
blown away from the land, which was already in sight, was quite enough
to make us toil away at our paddles without flagging or complaining.

When the sun was high over our heads at mid-day, we were obliged to stop
for a short spell, and begged for water; and though Tom at first
refused, as he said we were not yet on shore, after much begging he
relented and gave us a half-pint pannikin full each.

Refreshed by this, we took to our paddling with renewed vigour, though
we were somewhat dismayed to find that during our short rest we had
drifted back a part of our hard-won distance.

“Never mind, my boys,” said ever-cheery Tom; “pull away, and as we get
closer we shall be protected by the island from the current.” And, as
the event proved, his words were true, for after paddling for another
hour and a half we came to a bit of broken water where the current,
which was divided by the coral island, met again, after passing through
which we found we made good progress, and at about half-past four we
found ourselves close to the shore.

On the side we approached there was no surf, and we were able to beach
the boat in safety, and carrying the anchor up we buried it in the
ground, and securing the cable to it we were able to leave the boat
safe.

We were glad indeed to find ourselves ashore, and went up to the
cocoanut palms which we had seen to look for some fallen nuts, but our
attention was soon drawn to the peculiarities of the place. The island
was in the form of a circle, enclosing a lagoon about a mile and a half
in diameter, while the width of the encircling reef, for it was little
more, was not over a hundred and fifty yards. On the outside the edges
went sheer down, but inside they sloped away gradually, and on the
weather or south-eastern side a heavy surf was breaking.

We soon found some cocoanuts, and hacking off the outside covering with
a hatchet, we cut through the shell, and enjoyed a refreshing draught of
the sweet, cool milk, and then splitting them open we ate the kernels.

Bill and I now proposed to take our belongings out of the boat, and make
a tent out of the sail.

“Not so quick,” answered Tom. “I know all these reefs have an opening
somewhere on the lee-side, through which the lagoon can be entered. Now
I will take a musket and go one way, and you two take another and go the
other way, and whichever finds an entrance will fire; and then we shall
all come back to the boat, and bring her in.”

This was soon settled, and seeing that the boat was properly secured, we
started off, Bill and I going towards the south, and Tom towards the
north. Every step seemed to give new life to Bill and me; for we both
agreed that to be on an uninhabited island was one of the most
delightful things that could possibly happen, and that it was indeed a
happy change after the cruel treatment to which we had been subjected on
board the _Golden Fleece_. Along the sand ran multitudes of crabs,
which, as we approached, dodged into their burrows, emerging again as
soon as we had passed. Seaweeds of strange form and colour were
scattered about, and among the cocoanut palms were grasses and plants
the like of which we had never seen before, while besides seabirds of
many kinds we were delighted to see pigeons flying about, larger than
those we are accustomed to in England, and of brighter plumage.

“I say, Sam Hawse,” said Bill to me after we had been walking about a
quarter of an hour, “this is a jolly place. See, there’s a pigeon on
that trunk. Give me the gun, and let’s have a shot.”

“No, no, Bill,” I answered; “wait, for that would bring Tom running back
to us, and I know he would be angry. Let’s find the entrance if we can.”

Scarcely were the words out of my mouth when we heard Tom Arbor’s
musket, and turning back we hurried towards the boat, which we reached
just after he did.

“Bear a hand, my hearties,” he cried, as soon as he saw us. “Look there
to the westward; there’s another of the same squalls as the one we lost
the _Golden Fleece_ in coming up; that’s why the trades aren’t blowing.
We must get the boat inside before it comes, or she’ll be knocked to
pieces here.”

No words on his part were necessary to make us hurry, for the whole
western horizon was banked up with heavy clouds; and lifting the anchor
we put it in the boat, and then launched her off the narrow beach.

We gave way with a will along the shore, and soon came to the entrance
which Tom had found, which was some thirty feet wide and ten deep.

“There are others farther on,” said Tom, “so we must pull back some
little way to get good shelter;” and finding, after pulling along on the
inside for five minutes or so that the reef seemed higher there than
elsewhere, we determined on landing.

Accordingly we put the boat ashore, and hauling her up as high as we
could, we ran out the cable and made it fast round the stem of a
cocoanut tree, and then began to make our preparations for the night.

“To-night,” said Tom, “as there’s no time to build a hut, we can use the
sail for a tent; so, Bill, you bring it ashore, while Sam and I lash the
mast to those two palms for a ridge pole.”

The rising of the clouds warned us that we had no time to lose, so as
quickly as we could we rigged up our tent and tied the sail down to
small palm trees to prevent its being blown away; and then we brought
our muskets, ammunition, and all other belongings, including the
trade-box, up, and arranged them under its shelter, and Bill and I were
soon quite delighted at the appearance of our little tent.

However, we had not much time for looking about, for the rain came down
heavily on us, and was soon followed by a squall of wind, which levelled
our tent with the ground, burying us under the folds of the wet canvas.

We scrambled out as quickly as we could, but such was the fury of the
blast that we could scarcely keep our feet, and we could hear the crash
of falling palms all around us, while the feathery heads of those that
stood could be seen waving wildly by the lurid light of the flashes of
lightning, which were accompanied by peals of deafening thunder.

We did all we knew to prevent the sail being blown away, as once or
twice seemed more than probable; for the wind, getting under a corner,
lifted it up and almost tore it from our grasp. Indeed, we were dragged
along by it for some little distance, when it came against a palm that
stayed it, and soon the palm with the canvas wrapped around it fell, and
effectually secured it.

Ere long a new terror was added to our situation, for by the glimpses
given us of our island refuge by the lightning, we saw that the reef
both to the right and left of us was entirely under water, and that the
spot we had chosen for our camp seemed as if it might be submerged at
any moment.

“The boat!” cried I; “let’s get into her sooner than stay here to be
drowned.”

But that hope of refuge was cut off from us, for as we started towards
her we saw her driven from her moorings and blown away towards the other
side of the lagoon.

I know I lost heart, and began to wring my hands and to cry out that we
should die, and Bill Seaman told me since that he was quite as
frightened as I was. Tom Arbor, however, kept his presence of mind, and
said, “Don’t be frightened, lads; the Lord, who preserved us in the boat
and brought us here, will not desert us ashore. Let us pray to Him now.”

Suiting his action to his words, Tom knelt down, and amid the driving
rain and spray offered up a prayer, and Bill and I followed his example.
The words may not have been according to formula, but I am sure they
were meant reverently; and as if in answer to our prayer, the wind fell,
and the rain ceased, and the stars shone brightly, while the water
subsided from the surface of the reef.

We instantly set to work to look after our belongings, and found that
the mast had been snapped in two and the sail torn, but that no real
harm had happened to anything else.

We felt very cold and shivery, and Bill’s teeth rattled like a pair of
castanets, and he said, “I wish we could make a fire; but there’s
nothing to burn. Everything is soaking wet with the rain.”

“Rain can’t soak all the way through the husk of a cocoanut,” said Tom,
“and there are plenty of old ones about. Now set to work to look for
them, while I find a hatchet to split them up.”

We soon found not only a lot of nuts which were withered, and on being
split open gave us lots of dry fibre, but also we found that many of the
fronds which lay about had been so protected from the rain and spray by
others that lay upon them that they were fit for fuel; and from the
net-like shield or spathe of the base of the fruit-stalk we easily made
kindling; and not more than half an hour after the end of the storm we
had a fire blazing brightly, and were broiling turtle steaks over it and
drying our clothes, laughing and talking as if we had not just escaped
from death by the fact of our having chosen a bit of reef a few feet
higher than the rest for our camping-place.

After a time I said, “I wonder if this island has a name. I think we may
as well give it one. What do you say to Ring Island? It is just in the
form of one, and where we came in is like where the stone is set.”

The other two laughed at me, and Tom said, “We want something more
practical than a name; though, if you like, we will call it Ring Island.
We have to think how we are to live, and how we are to get away; for I
for one do not wish to stop for ever here.”

“Certainly not,” chimed in Bill and myself; “but what are your ideas?”

“I’ve had no time to think yet; but I have one, and that is that we had
better go to sleep now, and then to-morrow we must explore the island,
and see if we can find our boat or what remains of her.”

Bill said he did not feel sleepy; but Tom argued that if we did not
sleep now, we should want to sleep in the daytime, when we should be
working, and that sleep we must in order to live.

We all laughed at this, and piling fuel on the fire we made ourselves a
nest of dry leaves near it, and were soon all sound asleep.

I was awaked the next morning by Tom shaking me by the shoulder, and
opening my eyes found it was broad daylight. Bill Seaman was sitting up
yawning, and saying he did not think he had been to sleep at all.

“Nonsense,” said Tom; “I’ve been up half an hour and got some breakfast
ready. See here,” and he pointed to a tin plate full of turtle steaks,
which he had cooked. “Now make haste, both of you, and eat your
breakfasts, and then we’ll start off.”

We needed no bidding to make us fall to; but when we came to drinking, I
said, “It’s all very well drinking cocoanut milk; but I think we may get
tired of that, and the island does not seem big enough for a river.”

“I’ve been looking about,” said Tom, “before I woke you, and close by I
found some pools of rain-water; so we can fill our beakers and the
trade-chest, for that’s water-tight; and lest the water should dry up or
leak away, we had better do so at once.”

This was soon done, and then, having covered up all our belongings with
leaves, we each took a musket and some cartridges, a cocoanut shell full
of water to drink, and some turtle to eat, and set out on our journey of
discovery.

As we left our camp we found that the cocoanut palms had been levelled
all along the reef, except where we had been, and on the side of the
lagoon opposite; and we soon found that to get round the island by
toiling through and across the prostrate trunks, which lay strewn in
inextricable confusion, would be more than we could do in one or even
two days.

How were we to manage to get round to the other side, was now a question
to be solved; and after some consultation we determined to return to our
camp and set to work to build some sort of raft or catamaran, in which
we might navigate the lagoon enclosed by the reef, a proposition on
Bill’s part that we should wade and swim along the shore being decidedly
negatived by the appearance of a huge, hungry-looking shark, that looked
as if it would have been only too glad to make a meal off us.




                               CHAPTER V.
                              FISH-CURING.


On leaving the camp we had kept along the centre of the reef, and,
before deciding to return, we had examined both sides to see if by any
means we might manage to continue our road along the narrow beach; and
in doing so we came upon pools of salt water which were literally alive
with fish, and as we could see that the water was draining away through
the sands, there could be little doubt that they would soon be left high
and dry.

As soon as Tom Arbor saw them, he clapped his hands and said that here
was a chance of laying in a good stock of provisions, and that it would
be better to secure them before they went bad, and even before we
thought of our catamaran.

We were puzzled as to how he meant us to proceed; but he said he had
been shipmates with a Yarmouth lad on a previous voyage, and he had told
him how herrings were prepared by salt and smoking, and that, even if we
had no salt, we could smoke a good many, and so provide ourselves with a
stock which would last us some time, and which would be a pleasant
variety to the cocoanuts, which, so far as he saw, were the only
vegetable products fit for food to be found.

We at once set to work at one pool and picked out a lot of fish, which
we strung on our ramrods and carried back to camp with us. And after Tom
had shown me and Bill how to clean and split them open, he set to work
to prepare a number of thin, light rods out of the midribs of the leaves
of the palms which had been blown down. On these he slipped the fish as
soon as we had completed cleaning them, putting his rods in at one of
the gills and out at the mouth of each of the fish; and when a rod was
strung with fish about four inches apart, he put it on a couple of
uprights planted in the ground, under which he lighted a fire, which he
banked down with green leaves and damped cocoanut husks, so as to cause
a dense smoke.

“There,” he said—“that will do after a fashion; but at Yarmouth, I’m
told, they have houses to keep the smoke in. And now you, Bill, had
better make a basket out of some of these leaves, and go and get some
more fish, while Sam and I set to work to rig up some sort of a hut for
us.”

I said, “Why should we have our hut here? Isn’t the other side of the
reef bigger? It looks so.”

“Yes,” he said; “but don’t you see the palms over there waving in the
breeze? It’ll soon be down on us. And that must be the trades setting in
again; and they’ll blow for months and months without taking off. It’s
only when there are storms for a time that they cease.”

“Why’s that, Tom?” I asked.

“I can’t rightly tell the reason, but so it is; and while they’re
a-blowing there’ll always be a big surf tumbling on that side. And if
ever it happen that we see a ship, and have to get off to her, it’ll be
from this side that we shall have to make a start.”

Tom now chose four palm trees which had not been blown down, and telling
me to get a couple of axes from among our stores, he and I set to work
to cut them off as high up as we could manage by standing on the top of
our beakers and the trade-chest.

The four trees stood at the corners of a space about twelve feet long by
eight wide, and would, he said, make the main posts of the hut we were
to build; and before Bill came back with his load of fish two of them
had been cut at a height of six feet from the ground.

When Bill came back, he said,—

“Didn’t you say the Yarmouth folk used salt for their herrings?”

“Yes,” answered Tom. “Why do you ask?”

“Why, because I’ve found some. There’s a bit of rock stands up above the
ground about a hundred yards away, and the top of it is fashioned like a
basin, and in that there’s a lot of salt, though it’s wet now from last
night’s rain.”

“That’s good news, anyway. Do you just go and get some.”

“All right!” answered Bill; and he soon returned with a couple of
handkerchiefs filled with coarse, wet salt.

“Now, how do they put the salt into the fish and smoke ’em at the same
time?” I asked. “We haven’t a harness-tub to put ’em in.”

“I don’t rightly know,” said Tom; “but I suppose if, when we’ve cleaned
a fish out, we put some salt inside, and tie it up again with a strip of
palm leaf before hanging it up to smoke, it’ll answer pretty well.”

We all now set to work cleaning the fish Bill had brought, and filled
their insides with salt, and then hung them up as we had done the
others; and when we had finished we found we had about forty unsalted
and sixty salted, averaging over a pound weight each, most of them being
a sort of rock cod.

With this Tom said we might be satisfied for the time, and that we
should now get on with our hut as fast as we could.

The two remaining trees were soon cut, and just as I was going to jump
down off the trade-chest, on which I had been standing (the trade winds
had now reached our side of the reef), I saw something black floating in
the middle of the lagoon, and looking steadily at it, I soon saw that it
was our boat, but that from the way she was floating she must be half
full of water.

“Hurrah!” I cried, “hurrah!”

“What’s up, mate?” said both of my companions in a breath.

“Why, there’s our boat a-coming back to us of her own accord,” I
answered, pointing her out.

“That’s a providence,” said Tom. “We must keep an eye on her, that she
don’t get drifted out through one of the entrances. Now, then, one must
keep a watch on her; and as ’twas you, Sam, as first saw her, you do so.
But you can keep your hands employed in making sinnet for lashings for
the house out of the palm leaves.”

I was soon busy making sinnet, and keeping an eye on the boat, while
from the sound of the axes I could hear that Tom and Bill were busy.

The boat drifted pretty rapidly across the lagoon, and seemed to be
coming straight towards us until she came to within about two hundred
yards of the shore, when she altered her direction and began to move
quickly towards the entrance by which we had got into the lagoon.

I had been desirous of securing her without saying a word to my
companions, but now I feared that I should be unable to do so, and
called to them to come to my assistance. Seaman at once proposed to swim
off to her, but Tom Arbor would not allow him, for fear of sharks, and
said we had best go to the opening by which we had entered the lagoon,
for she would be sure to drift there.

He was not mistaken, for she grounded just at the inner end, and we were
able to secure her without any risk, and tow her back to where our camp
was.

“Now, lads,” said Tom, “we had better bail her out and haul her up on
shore.”

We set to work to bail her out, but soon found that she leaked so much
that it was hopeless to attempt it.

“She’s no use as she is,” I said. “We must get her up ashore and see
what we can do to her.”

“That’s all very well, but how can we haul her up full of water?”
answered both Bill and Tom in a breath.

“Why, where water comes in, it must be able to go out; and every bit we
raise her out of the water, she will empty herself.”

“True; but we’re not strong enough to haul her up the weight she is
now.”

“I have it!” I cried, after thinking a minute or two. “Let’s put a palm
trunk against two of the uprights of the house, and bringing the cable
to it, rig a Spanish windlass. And some of those small palms I see
you’ve been cutting for ridge-poles and rafters will do for handspikes
and rollers.”

My proposal was hailed with delight, and from the small palms, which
were not more than three or four inches in diameter, we soon cut some
levers and rollers, and essayed to heave the boat up. We found, however,
that our utmost efforts would not move the boat when she was once
solidly aground, and that, heave as we might, we only buried her bows in
the sand.

After wasting our strength for about a quarter of an hour, we stopped to
regain our breath, and walking down to the boat, Tom said he would pass
the cable round her outside, so as not to bury her; and this being done
we gave another heave, but with no better results than before.

“Seems to me,” I said, “these handspikes are too short.”

“That may be,” answered Tom, “but how are we to reach the tops of longer
ones?”

“Why not bend the leadline or boat’s sheet on?” said Bill.

“Better still,” I answered. “We have the blocks of the sheet and
halyards. We can reeve a jigger, and make it fast to the top of our
lever, and the other end we’ll bring down to that palm there.”

This at last answered, and with each shift of our tackle we were able to
haul the boat up about six inches, and in little more than an hour we
had got her half out of the water, and altogether on rollers, and found
that the water that remained in her no longer ran out. So we set to work
and bailed her out, and then she was so much lighter that we were able
to dispense with our purchase and long levers and use our short ones
again, and before another hour was past we had her high and dry on the
beach.

We now left her and set to work about our hut again, and lashing small
palm trunks to the four corner-posts, we had the frame of our shanty
pretty well up before the sinking of the sun warned us that it was time
to prepare for the night.

We spread the torn sail over the weather side to protect us from the
wind, and Bill went to the nearest pool to get some fresh fish for our
supper, for we would not touch those we had put to smoke; and they were
soon grilling on the embers, and furnished us with a capital meal, which
we washed down with cocoanut milk.

Supper finished, we made our beds of leaves, and laid us down to sleep,
thoroughly tired with our day’s work; but first of all Tom proposed that
we should have prayers, and return thanks to God for the mercies shown
to us; and this good custom once established, we never departed from it.

When we woke in the morning, Tom and Bill said they would thatch our
hut, and that I, as the carpenter of the party, should examine the boat
and see what I could do to repair her.

At first sight my task seemed nearly hopeless, for many of her planks
were split, and her seams were open and gaping over all the fore part of
her, and I had neither nails nor planks with which to mend her.




                              CHAPTER VI.
                        A VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION.


Tom and Bill went on with the hut, and rapidly thatched the roof and
weather side, while I was trying, with the fibre of the husks of
cocoanuts, to calk the seams and splits in the boat; but I found that
instead of doing good I only did harm, for as I forced my extemporized
oakum into the openings they gaped wider and wider, and I had to come to
the conclusion that to repair a clincher-built boat by calking was
beyond my power.

I came up to where my companions were at work, and told them of my
failure, and said,—

“I’m afraid I can do nothing to the boat. I only make the leaks worse by
calking.”

“Don’t be down-hearted, mate. We’ll have a look at her, and see if we
can’t figure out a way to make her sea-worthy, for I don’t intend to
live on this island all my days,” said Tom. “Now it’s about time to
knock off work for an hour or so, and after we’ve had some food, we’ll
all set to work to thatch the hut and have it finished before night.”

Accordingly we knocked off work, and while Bill went to get some fresh
fish from a pool, Tom and I went to make up the fire by which we were
smoking those we had prepared the day before.

In doing this we found that some coral and shells, which had been mixed
up with the fuel, had been burnt, and when we touched it, it fell to
pieces.

“Why, it’s lime,” said Tom. “Now that gives me an idea. In India and
China I’ve seen lime and oil used for calking instead of pitch, and
we’ll plaster the boat inside with the mixture, so as to keep out the
water.”

“That’s very well,” I said, “but where’s the oil to come from?”

“Why, out of the cocoanuts. You know all the copra, as they call it,
which we shipped in the _Golden Fleece_ is only dried cocoanut kernels,
and all they use it for is to make oil.”

“Well, then, but we can’t get the oakum to hold in the boat, and all
your oily mortar will crack out.”

“No doubt we’ll find a way. But come now, Bill has dinner ready, and
after dinner we’ll finish the hut, and I daresay before long we’ll think
of a way to patch the boat.”

That evening saw our hut, as far as the outside was concerned, pretty
well finished, and we were able to sleep in it comfortably and warmly.
Next morning, when Bill went to fetch our fish for breakfast, he brought
back the unpleasant news that several of the pools were dry, and the
fish dead and beginning to smell most unpleasantly.

“Well,” said Tom, “we must clear them out, or we shall be killed by the
smell. We shall have a regular pestilence. After breakfast we must set
about that before anything else.”

We set out accordingly as soon as we could, and found that what Bill had
said was only too true, and a most unpleasant day’s work we had throwing
the dead fish into the sea; and we found that even in the pools where
some water remained it was sinking so rapidly that the fish in them
would soon die also.

As we sat round our fire that night, we were speaking of the necessity
of going on with this disagreeable work, when Bill said, “Anyway, we
might make a pond here of coral rocks, which would keep a good many in.”

“That’s right, Bill,” I answered. “Don’t you think so, Tom?”

“Surely; and we can’t do better than go on with it in the morning.”

Next morning, as soon as it was light, we set about looking for a spot
where we could keep our fish, and before long we lighted on a small
creek about twenty feet long by ten wide at the entrance, and in which
the water was about six feet deep.

To close up the entrance with a pile of coral blocks thrown together
loosely was not a difficult matter, and during the whole of the next
week we were busy doing this and filling the pond or stew with live
fish, salting and smoking others, and finishing our house, to which we
contrived a door and windows, closed with frames made of the midribs of
the palm leaves, on which were worked a matting of the fronds.

Our beds we made of the husks of dry cocoanuts, which we pounded with
stones to loosen the fibre; and from the shells of the nuts we fashioned
a number of utensils which we added to our scanty stock.

When this work was all finished, I asked Tom Arbor if he had thought of
any means of repairing our boat, and he said “Yes,” and that now we
could set about it as soon as we liked.

His plan, when he described it, was to make a coating all over the
inside of the boat below the thwarts of cocoanut fibre mixed with lime
and oil, and to keep it in its place by an inner lining of planks
fashioned out of the trunks of the palms.

This idea seemed capital, and we had now to provide means for carrying
it out.

During the whole time we had been drying our fish, of which we now had
some two hundred pounds well cured and salted, and which, we found, made
a pleasant change from those we took out of our stew, we had mixed coral
and shells with the fuel, and had now a good stock of lime. The oakum
from the husks of the cocoanuts we could easily make—indeed, by this
time we had become so expert in preparing it that ambitious ideas of
rope-making had entered our heads; but to secure the inner lining, and
to provide the necessary oil for our cement, was a more difficult
business.

We tried boiling bits of the copra, or dried kernel, in our pannikins,
and soaking pieces in the shells of the turtles, which we had carefully
preserved, but with but little success. Next we made a rude mortar by
chopping a square hole in the side of a prostrate palm and pounding the
copra in it; but the fibrous wood soaked up the oil as quickly as we
pounded it out.

“Come, now, let’s put our considering-caps on again, and see what we can
do,” said Tom.

At last I said,—

“I have it! Let’s make a square box, and plaster it inside with lime,
and then fill it with the copra chopped as fine as we can in bags of
palm leaves, and then squeeze it with a lever and purchase in the same
way as we got the boat up, and let the oil run into the turtle shell and
any empty cocoanuts we can muster.”

After several attempts, which were more or less unsuccessful, we managed
to rig up a sort of press; and at the end of a fortnight we had enough
oil for our purpose, and then set to work to split our planks for the
lining. This was easy enough, as the trunks of the trees were easily
divided; but when we had all our material ready, the question of
securing the lining had to be faced.

From the bottom boards and stern and head sheets, which we had to take
up to do our work thoroughly, we managed to get a good many nails, and
out of the wood we made strips to run athwart ships over our planks of
cocoanut; and these strips we shaved and nailed down in their places,
and so at last managed to get the boat water-tight, and, as Tom said,
much stronger, in case she ran on a rock, than she had ever been before.

“Now,” he said, “we will go for a voyage to the other side of the
island; but first we will paint her over outside with lime and oil, so
that the weeds won’t grow on her.”

This did not take us long, and when we had finished we launched her, and
found to our delight that she was perfectly stanch; but when she was in
the water, we found that we had put so much extra weight in her that she
floated dangerously low.

“Oh,” said Tom, “that won’t do; if she shipped a sea now she would go
down like a stone.”

“But, anyway, we can go to the other side of the lagoon, for there must
be some pigeons there. We saw some the first day, and none have come
near our hut, and I’m tired of fish and cocoanuts,” said Bill.

“No, I won’t run any risk,” said Tom. “I’ll deck her right in, except a
well for our stores, and we can raise on her gunwale with a couple of
good strakes of palm.”

“More work!” I answered. “And where are the nails to come from?”

“No nails wanted. We’ll lace ’em on India fashion,” said Tom, “and put a
couple of half trunks round her as fenders.”

“That’s work enough, Tom. However, as you say it, done it must be; but I
hope you’ll remember the carpenter.”

Tom laughed, and said it was but to be on the safe side, and that he
intended to have the boat sea-worthy.

We got the boat moored in a little creek like that we had made into our
fish pond, and for the next three days we were very busy with her, and
got a strake of cocoanut plank about eight inches wide round her fore
and aft.

When this was done, Bill and I at last prevailed on Tom to make the
voyage to the weather side of the lagoon to see what might be found
there.

Bill and I flew for our paddles as soon as Tom assented to our wish, and
taking with us some smoked fish and a dozen of green cocoanuts to drink
on our way, we started off, Bill and I paddling, while Tom was busy in
the stern hammering and chopping at something which, as to paddle we
faced forward, we could not see.

“What are you making all that row about, Tom, old man?” asked Bill.

“Never you mind. You’ll see in good time,” he answered.

“Oh!” I cried; “Tom has an old head on young shoulders. I wonder his
hair ain’t grey. He’s doing something good, you may be sure.”

When we left off paddling once or twice to open a cocoanut and drink its
juice, Tom hid what he had been doing from us, and it was not until we
landed on the weather part of the reef that we found what he had been
doing, when he proudly loaded a musket he had brought with him with
slugs, and firing, knocked over a couple of green pigeons.

Bill was so delighted with this that he begged to be allowed to pluck
and cook them at once, saying he cared more for a roast pigeon than for
all the discoveries we were going to make.

Leaving him intent on his culinary labours, Tom and I pushed on through
the cocoanut trees, and after walking some fifty yards we came to a
small mound or protuberance of a different sort of rock from the coral
of which the rest of the island was composed, and from this gushed
forth, more precious in our eyes than a gold mine or all the diamonds of
Golconda, a tiny rill of crystal-bright water.

We both saw it at the same moment, and, rushing forward, drank, and
bathed our hands and faces, and set up a great shout to call Bill to
come to us.

So absorbed were we in the delight of finding this spring—for we had
not the slightest hope of finding one on this reef—that it was not till
after Bill, attracted by our shouts, had come up to us that we noticed
the signs of man’s handiwork close to the spring.

On the ground we saw lying some troughs made of hollowed palm trunks,
which had evidently once conveyed the waters of the spring to some place
where they were required.

“Let us follow up these,” I said. “We may find something of use.”

“Not much likelihood,” said Tom. “Some poor shipwrecked man made these,
and they have evidently not been used for years. He has either died or
else got away.”

“Anyway, we can but look to see how he lived, and we may find something
that will be of use,” I answered.

“Of course,” replied Tom; “we’ve come over to see the whole place, and
we will look carefully about for anything that may be of use, only don’t
raise your hopes.”

Hardly had he spoken when we heard the crowing of a cock.

“Hark!” cried Bill; “there’s fowls. There may be some one alive yet.
Come along.”

We all pushed forward in the direction of the sound, and soon came upon
a space which had once been cleared, but was now all covered with
undergrowth, and in the midst of which stood a hut, the walls of which,
being built of logs cut from the palms, still remained, but the thatched
roof had fallen in.

Towards this we pushed our way, disturbing, as we did, several fowls,
and noticing that among the tangled undergrowth there grew a good
quantity of maize, and that evidently at one time this space had been
cultivated.

Up the walls of the hut grew creepers, and the holes which had served as
door and windows were thickly matted with them, so that we had to cut
them away in order to effect an entrance.




                              CHAPTER VII.
                        BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY.


When we got inside we could at first see but little, for the thatched
roof, which had fallen in, had buried everything with a dusty brown
covering; so we set to work to clear this out, and see if it hid
anything that might be of value to us.

In one corner there was apparently a mound of these half-decayed leaves,
and we decided on commencing our work there; but judge of our horror
when, after removing a few armfuls, we came upon the skull of a man, and
then proceeding more carefully and reverently, we uncovered a skeleton
lying on a sort of bed-place, wrapped in blankets, which crumbled to
dust as we touched them.

“Poor fellow,” said Tom; “he must have died here alone, with none to
bury him. Let us do it now.”

Both Bill and I agreed with this, for we were too frightened by these
poor remains of mortality to go on with our search, and we gladly set to
work to clear away a space where with our knives and hatchets we could
dig a grave.

While we were thus occupied, Tom made a sort of mat of plaited palm
leaves, in which he carefully put the skeleton, and lashed it all up
with sinnet.

“I wonder who or what he was,” he said, as he came bearing his sad
burden to where Bill and I were at work, and had by this time dug the
grave to a depth of about three feet.

“That will do,” said Tom; “now get some palm leaves, and line the
whole.”

As soon as we had done this, we reverently laid the bundle containing
the skeleton in the grave, and covered it in, and then at Tom’s
suggestion we knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer.

By this time it was getting on toward sunset, and it was necessary to
prepare for our night’s lodging. While Tom went to see the boat properly
secured, I made a fire, and Bill acted as cook; and as in looking about
for fuel I had come upon a nest of eggs, we promised ourselves a feast,
and glad indeed were we to wash down the eggs with sweet, fresh water,
and to add to our meal some heads of Indian corn roasted in the ashes.

Next morning before daylight Tom woke Bill and me, and said, “Now be
quiet and come with me. I have marked where the fowls roost, and if we
come on them softly, we may secure some before they wake.”

Softly and stealthily we stole to the place Tom showed us, and there we
found the remains of a shed, under which there were a series of perches
on which some thirty or forty fowls were roosting.

As quietly as we could we seized on them, and tied their legs together;
but before we had secured more than a dozen, the rest were alarmed and
made their escape.

“Never mind, lads,” said Tom; “we’ll get the others another night. And
now, when we have had breakfast, we will go on with the examination of
the hut.”

It did not take us long to clear out the remainder of the thatch, and we
soon found that the hut had been built with great care and ingenuity.

The bed-place on which we had found the skeleton occupied one corner,
and under it was a seaman’s chest, in which we found some
carefully-patched clothes, and the tattered remains of a Bible, and the
fragments of a chart.

No name or anything to give a clue to their owner was to be found,
except that on the horn handle of a clasp-knife were cut “Jack” and a
couple of crosses. We also found a sailor’s ditty-bag, containing
needles and thread, palm for sewing, beeswax, and buttons.

Tom said he was glad indeed to find the Bible, for now he said we should
be able to read a chapter every night when we said our prayers; and the
chart he carefully examined to see if it might give a clue to our
whereabouts, and tell us if any inhabited islands existed within a
distance which we might reach in safety in our boat.

On the chart there was a cross made with a bit of charcoal, and from it
were drawn a series of lines in various directions, as if the unhappy
man whose remains we had buried had pored over it for many a weary hour,
and attempted to calculate some means of escape from his solitary island
home.

“Curious!” I said. “He must have tried to make a boat or something. But
see, there are a lot of islands away to the westward of that cross,
which I suppose means this island; I should think he might have tried
for them.”

“Wait a bit, mates,” said Tom; “we’ll find out more soon.”

And proceeding with our search in the middle of the room, we found a
table, which had fallen to the ground, made of some pieces of wood which
had evidently belonged to the companion of a ship, and stools of the
same material.

On the table we found written in charcoal letters, which could scarcely
be deciphered:—

“......cowar-s......left alone......no hope......ill
......heart-broken......money.”

What this meant we soon understood, all except the last. The man we had
buried had been deserted by his companions; but what was meant by money
we could not understand. Perhaps they had had money on the island, and
quarrelled about its division.

This we put carefully on one side, and then, proceeding with our search,
we found a fireplace made of wood, plastered with lime, and full of
wood-ashes, and on it were an iron pot and a frying-pan.

Scattered about we found cups made out of cocoanut shells, and a couple
of plates, which had been broken and cleverly cemented with lime on to
bits of wood.

“Evidently he did not die of starvation,” said Tom, “for he had fowls,
cocoanuts, and Indian corn; but now let us see what else there is on the
island, for I think we have pretty well seen everything in the hut.”

Leaving the hut, we passed through the clearing, and then through some
more palm trees, and soon emerged on the weather side of the island, on
which the surf was beating with relentless fury.

Here, half buried in sand or hidden by vegetation, we found scattered
about the wreckage of a schooner of about two hundred tons, which must
have been run plump on to the island.

Close to the beach we found another small hut, inside which were stowed
canvas, carpenter’s tools, and cordage; and close by we could see
several pieces of wood from the wreck, which had evidently been
fashioned into parts of a boat, and a pile of planks from the deck of
the ship, as well as several others of her belongings, all covered over
with the remnants of palm-thatching.

Whoever he was, the man had been trying to build a boat.

“I wonder what prevented him,” said Bill.

“What’s that sticking up there?” I asked, pointing to a piece of wood
among the undergrowth.

“Why, the handle of an adze,” answered Tom.

Looking at this, we soon found the reason why the unfortunate man had
desisted from his work, and probably the cause of his death.

The rusty iron of the adze had stuck deep in a plank, and lying by it
were some small bones, which it did not need any knowledge of anatomy to
see belonged to a human foot.

Evidently the unfortunate creature had chopped off a part of his foot
while engaged in fashioning a piece of wood, and had managed to get back
to his hut to die.

“Poor fellow,” said Bill and I in a breath; “he never could have built a
craft here, and launched her through that surf.”

“No,” answered thoughtful Tom Arbor, “but he may have intended to build
her on the other side, and only shaped the parts here, so as to have
less weight to carry or drag across; but, anyway, his death is our good
fortune, for we can deck and rig our boat for sea-going from what is
here. If I mistake not we need it, for there’s never an island on that
chart within three hundred miles of us; and if there are any nearer,
they’re likely but places like this, with ne’er a living soul aboard of
them.”

“Well, what do you intend to do?” I asked.

“Why, rig up this hut again, and then get all our belongings over to
this side; and then deck our boat, and rig her with something easier to
handle than a dipping lug.”

“All right; but now we must look after the fowls we caught; they’ll be
hungry and thirsty.”

We soon made our way back to the hut; and as many of its rafters were
still sound, it did not take us very long to put a roof on that would
keep out the sun and all ordinary rain. Bill was off to make a coop for
the fowls that we had caught.

This done, we set steadily to work, and after getting all the things
that we had left at our first camp to this place, where we were blessed
with water, we again hove our boat up on shore; and now, having wood and
materials, Tom and I laboured to make a real trustworthy craft, while
Bill was told off to look after the fowls, and remove the undergrowth
from the clearing, being careful not to injure the maize, which we
trusted would furnish us with a supply of food for our intended voyage.

First of all, Tom and I made a deep false keel to our craft, which we
named the _Escape_; and as we could not through bolt it to the keel, we
put planks on either side of keel and false keel, and overlapping both,
and nailed all solidly together.

This being done, we fixed a head knee in a similar manner; and then
having given the _Escape_ a thorough good coating of lime and oil, we
launched her again, lest she should get too heavy for us to manage.

This naturally had taken us some days, and Tom and I had laboured from
morning to night at her, only coming to the hut for meals, which Bill
had always ready for us.

Bill, the evening that we had got the _Escape_ afloat, said, “You two
fellows must think me a precious lazy hound not to come and help you
more than I have. Now the boat’s afloat, I want you to come with me
to-morrow to see what I have been doing.”

“Why, catching fowls, clearing out the water-troughs, making up the pool
they lead into afresh, and all manner of things,” I said.

“That’s not all. I have had time to hunt about, and if you’ll come with
me to-morrow, I’ll show you something.”

“Shall we, Tom?” I asked. “I want to think about our ship before we go
on with her.”

“Perhaps one day won’t matter. What is it you’ve found, Bill?”

“Never you mind until I show it you.”

It was accordingly agreed that we should the next morning go and see
what Bill had to show, and not to ask him to say what it was beforehand.

Early in the morning Bill woke us, and gave us a good breakfast of eggs,
roast maize, and a grilled fowl; and when we had finished he said, “Come
along, and see what I have to show you.”

First he took us to the spring, and showed us how he had patched up the
troughs, cleared out a basin, and lined it with turtle shells, into
which the water fell, and which was large enough to take a bath in. Here
we all enjoyed a thorough good wash, and sat in turn under the end of
the trough from which the water fell into the basin.

Bill soon got tired of being here, and said, “If I’d thought that you
would have been so long here, I’d have brought you here last night; now
bear a hand, and come on.”

Getting out of the water, we dried ourselves with cocoanut fibre, and
putting on our clothes we went on with Bill a short way, until he
brought us to a shed he had made for the fowls, which he had enclosed
with leaf mats; and here he said he had all the fowls on the island
except two or three, and that some hens were laying regularly, while
others were sitting on their eggs.

“Certain you’re a regular farmer,” said Tom.

“Wait a bit; I’ll show you if I’m a farmer. Come along here a bit
farther.” And following him along, he brought us to a clearing about
twice as large as that where our hut stood, and which, like it, had been
at one time planted with maize; but here the maize had been stronger
than the weeds, and Bill having torn up all the latter, there was to be
seen enough Indian corn, nearly ripe, to have loaded the _Escape_ twice
over.

“Well, you are a farmer, surely!” exclaimed both Tom and myself.

“You may say that, but you haven’t seen all yet.”

“What! Not yet?”

“Not by a long chalk. I think the fellow whose hut we have lived up
there by himself, and the others down here. Come along, and I’ll show
you some more good-luck.”

“You see here,” he said, when we had gone other three hundred yards;
“the reef’s cut nearly in two by the sea, and they’ve made a stiff fence
right across. And, look; you see they’ve brought the water right down
here too. Now over this fence there’s three or four huts, or what was
huts; and what d’ye think there is there?”

“Sure we can’t tell. Anything to say what the wreck was, or anything?”

“Not a word or a line, not a scrap of paper; but there’s five graves,
and there’s been somewhere about eight or so got away.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Why, by counting the bunks in the huts, to be sure. But, there; you
won’t guess what else there is. There’s a turtle-pond, some half-dozen
big turtles in it, and there’s pigs.”

“Pigs! Are you sure?” said Tom.

“Sure as eggs is eggs,” answered Bill.

“Can we catch any?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Bill. “I daresay we can if we likes; but I seed
some as fat as butter, and an old sow with a lot of young uns. But that
ain’t all; there’s something else.”

“What is it? Tell us at once.”

“Do you remember the writing on the table, and that we couldn’t find out
what ‘money’ meant?”

“Certainly; but what’s that got to do with what you found?”

“Why, I’ve found the money, and a mighty lot there be, I can tell you.
Gold guineas—thousands of them!”




                             CHAPTER VIII.
                            A NARROW ESCAPE.


“Nonsense, lad,” said Tom. “No craft that sailed these waters ever had
thousands of guineas aboard of her, seeing as how there isn’t no use for
money in these here parts. All the trade is with beads and iron and such
like.”

“Maybe so; but the money’s here, and I found it. It seems as if the man
who lived up in our hut, he were separated from his mates, and that he
had the money one time.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Why, it seems as if he had hidden it under the fireplace, for there’s a
hole under it which would hold the box I’ve found down here; and that
they who took it went off in a hurry—maybe saw a sail, and left him and
the money behind.”

“Well, where is this money? Come along and let us see it.”

“Why, down in the biggest of them huts there, in a box tied up with
cord; but it’s rotted, and the money tumbled out at the sides.”




[Illustration: “_There was the box, tied together with string._”
      Page 76.]




We at once got over the fence, which we could easily see had been built
to keep the pigs within bounds, and followed Bill to where there were
standing the remains of some huts, which, as he said, had been cleared
of what would give any clue as to who the occupants had been; but there,
under one of the bed-places, was the box, as Seaman had described it,
wrapped up in a piece of sail-cloth, tied together with island-made
string, and the coverings being more than half rotten, the contents had
burst out, and partly rolled, on the ground.

Curious, though the money was safe, and I am sure a roast sucking pig
would have been of much more use to us than all the gold that ever was
coined, it was to this money we first turned our attention, and agreed
that nothing should be done until it was safely stowed away—money that
had lain for years untouched and uncared for.

We pulled out the box, and emptied the coins still remaining in it into
a heap on the ground, and added to them those which had fallen out, and
to our eyes the pile of gold and silver seemed a mound of inexhaustible
wealth.

However, we had divided the gold from the silver, and counted it out as
nearly as we were able, for there were coins of various nations mixed up
with the guineas of which Bill had spoken. We found that there was about
twelve hundred pounds—a sum far larger than could have been expected to
be found on board a trader in the South Seas.

As soon as we had counted out our money, we began to talk of how we
could stow it away; and after much discussion we decided on carrying it
to the hut where we were living, and putting it in the dead seaman’s
chest.

As we were on our way back with it, just before we came to the fence, we
saw some of the pigs of which Bill had told us, and I managed to catch a
little squeaker to carry it back for our dinner; but its cries alarmed
the mother, who came after us in hot haste, and if we had not been on
the fence when she came up she would doubtless have made us pay for
kidnapping her offspring. As it was, she caught hold of my trousers in
her mouth, and would have hauled me back on top of her if, luckily, they
had not been rather rotten and given way, Mrs. Pig falling back with a
piece of tarry trousers in her mouth, while I tumbled over on the other
side of the fence, by no means sorry to get off so cheaply.

The pigling I had caught I had chucked over before, so all the efforts
of the old sow to rescue her darling child from its fate were fruitless,
and we soon had him stewing in the iron pot.

Whilst he was cooking, we spoke of the money we had found, and what we
should do with it, and puzzled our heads to know where the schooner had
come from, and what nation she belonged to.

We thought she was English by the Bible and chart, but the money puzzled
us more than enough; so at last we agreed not to bother ourselves about
where it came from any more, and began to build castles in the air of
buying or building a ship, of which Tom Arbor should be captain, and
Bill Seaman and myself the two mates.

Whilst we were yarning away, Bill suddenly said, “I forgot something I
found by the box the money was in. Look here!” and he pulled out of the
breast of his shirt a small leather bag tied up carefully. “See,” he
said, as he undid it and poured out the contents; “there’s a lot of
pretty beads; pity they haven’t holes in ’em, or we might string ’em.”

“Well, they are pretty,” said both Tom and myself, as we eagerly bent
over the little heap of shining balls; “but ’tis a pity they’re not of a
size and true shaped. I suppose they’re some of the beads the natives
wouldn’t have to do with. Never mind, we can keep them; there were none
like them among the trade aboard of the _Golden Fleece_.”

The little bag had its contents restored to it, and was stowed away in
the chest with our money, and we then all concluded it was time for bed.

By dint of hard work and manœuvring Tom and I, at the end of ten days
more, had got our boat raised and decked forward and aft, leaving only
an open space amidships in which we could lie down; and in this we also
built a cemented fireplace similar to the one we had found in the dead
man’s hut. Outside the boat we had also fastened a great, bolster-like
fender of cocoanut fibre, which we served over with string made of the
same material, the whole being thoroughly soaked in a mixture of
cocoanut oil and hog fat; for Bill, while we were acting as shipwrights,
had been farming and hunting to make provision for our voyage, and as we
said we wanted grease, he had boiled down the remains of two porkers, of
which he had salted part to furnish us with meat.

The only question now remaining was to rig our little ship, and this
gave rise to endless discussion. At first we decided on keeping her
mizzen as it was, and altering the torn dipping lug into a jib and
standing lug; but we soon saw that she was now so much deeper and
heavier that this would scarcely move her except in very heavy weather.

After much trouble we managed, by fitting her with a bowsprit and using
up all that was not rotten of the canvas we had found on the island, to
give her a suit of sails for going on a wind, and made a huge mat of
palm leaves for a square-sail to be set in running.

All being completed, we packed on board under her fore and aft decks a
stock of provisions, consisting of dried and salted pig, turtle flesh,
smoked fish, and maize; while, besides our beakers, we had hundreds of
cocoanut shells full of water, and on deck we had a coop of a dozen
fowls.

All being prepared, our stock, according to our calculations, being
enough to last us for at least a couple of months, we paddled the
_Escape_ out of the lagoon, and, making sail to a fresh trade wind which
blew on our beam, we steered in the direction of the nearest island
marked on the chart.

Though we had been now a long time on the island, and had found a refuge
there from starvation or a still more dreadful death by thirst, we
quitted it without regret, and launched forth on our voyage into the
unknown.

As to setting our course, at first we had an idea by the sun by day, and
we had learned aboard of the _Golden Fleece_ that when the Southern
Cross was vertical it was always due south; but I do not suppose we were
ever accurate within two or three points either way of south-west, which
we aimed at, and mostly by keeping the wind abeam.

The _Escape_ made very good weather and steered easily, but,
notwithstanding the size of her patchwork sails, she did not go fast
through the water. “Never mind, lads,” said Tom, when Bill and I
complained of this; “it’s better than a leaky corner of the forecastle
of the _Fleece_ to sleep in.”

“Yes,” I said, “and there ain’t no mate to boot us or bos’n to
rope’s-end us here either.”

“Ay, and more than that,” cried Bill, who was superintending the boiling
of our pot, in which was a piece of beautiful pork and some maize, “our
tucker here ain’t mouldy, weevilly biscuit and salt junk that’s more fit
for sole leather than food for humans.”

“Well done, cobbler,” was our answer, and we put up patiently with the
slowness of our progress when we considered how much better off we were
than we had ever been aboard of the _Golden Fleece_.

The first day and night and all the next day passed away without our
seeing anything save porpoises, which gambolled around, looking, as they
always do to my mind, the happiest of created beings, flying-fish, and
silver-winged gulls. But about the middle of the second night Bill, who
had the watch, called out, “Rouse up, mates; whatever is that?”

Tom and I were awake in a second, and looking ahead as he told us, we
saw a sight which all the fireworks ever made by the ingenuity of man
could not have equalled. High up in the heavens, blotting out the stars,
was a dense, black cloud, which seemed to be supported on a pillar or
fountain of fire, and from the cloud were raining down masses of matter
white-hot, red-hot. While we were looking, indeed before we had properly
cleared our eyes of sleep, we heard a tremendous noise, louder than a
thousand claps of thunder, and the breeze which had been carrying us
steadily along suddenly ceased.

“Whatever can that be?” I cried. “A ship blown up?”

“A ship!” answered Tom. “No ship that ever floated could give a sight
like that, nor a clap neither. That’s a burning mountain. I’ve heard as
there be some in these parts.”

Clap succeeded clap, but though all wonderful, none of them equalled in
intensity of the sound the first one, while the fountain of fire leaped
up and down in the most marvellous manner.

“Look out, boys; be smart and shorten sail,” said Tom. “I’ve heard as
how there be great waves after one of these blows-up, and we must keep
our craft bows on if so be as we are not to be swamped.”

Sail was shortened as quickly as we could, and our well covered over
with the canvas to prevent us being swamped; and then Tom told us to
lash ourselves to the deck, and get our paddles out, while he got the
oar over the stern, so as to be ready to twist the boat in any
direction.

Scarcely were we ready when we heard a low, moaning sound, and soon saw
a wall of water of appalling height sweeping rapidly towards us. We
worked frantically at oar and paddles, and fortunately it met us bows
on; but so steep was the wave that we could not rise properly to it, and
for what seemed an appalling time we were buried in the water. Would our
boat free herself and rise again, or would she sink under the weight,
and drag us down with her to the depths of the ocean?

Such were the thoughts which passed through my mind, and, I doubt not,
through the minds of my companions; but they were answered by our
emerging from the wave with our gunwale broken, but otherwise uninjured.
Our decks proved stanch, and though the weight of water had beaten the
sails down into the well, which was full, the boat still floated.

“Quick! you two unlash yourselves, and bail for your lives, for there’ll
be some more of these waves, and if she meets them half water-logged as
she is, down to Davy Jones’s locker we go,” cried Tom.

Bill and I did not need any second bidding to obey Tom’s order, while he
straightened the boat in the direction the wave had struck, and we
bailed away for dear life.

Before we were half clear we heard the same sort of sound as had
heralded the first wave, and again we were struck and half buried by the
water; but the wave was not so high as the first, and we came through at
the cost only of having to bail out more water.

Each successive wave, for there were a dozen, was smaller and smaller,
and at last the sea became smooth again, and the trade winds blew once
more; while from the burning mountain, instead of a fountain of fire and
sparks, we could only see the rosy reflection of flames on rolling
masses of white smoke.

We soon repaired our damage, and made sail with, as far as we could see,
no real harm done save that the coop with our fowls in it had been
washed away, and the wood we had for our fire was so damp that it would
not light, and we had to make our breakfast of raw pork and uncooked
Indian corn.

When the sun rose, we hung up our clothes to dry, and found that we
could still see the column of smoke, though not the reflection of the
flames.

Tom steered steadily for this smoke, and when we asked if we were not
running into danger by steering for the volcano, he comforted us by
saying that after such a blow-up as we’d seen there could be no other
for some time; and, as he understood, these burning mountains were
always in the centre of a group of islands, and we should be sure to
find inhabitants, and maybe a schooner or ship trading for sandalwood,
bêche de mer, and copra, in which we could get a passage to China,
Australia, or New Zealand.

Though the trade winds blew fresh and the sun was shining, the whole air
seemed to be full of a sort of brown haze; and we found that our decks,
sails, clothes, hair, in fact everything, were covered with a fine,
brown dust, which settled down on us, and in such quantities that we had
to keep on shovelling it overboard or we should have sunk under its
weight.

All day we sailed on in the direction of the smoke, and at night we
again saw it lighted up by the reflection of the fire beneath. We were
tired and weary, and though we took it in turns to steer and look out,
the helmsman often found his head bobbing down on his chest. But in the
middle of the night we were all frightened out of our sleepiness by the
boat striking some hard substance.

“What’s up?” cried Tom, as he came out of the well, where he and I had
been sleeping. “What have you run into, Bill?”

Bill was as much startled as we were, and as the bumps were repeated, we
concluded it would be best to shorten sail and wait for daylight, though
we at once sounded, in case we might be near any land, but found no
bottom, though we bent every available bit of rope on to our leadline.

When the sun rose we saw a strange sight indeed, for the whole surface
of the sea was covered with floating masses of stone, through which we
had to make our way, two of us standing in the bow to fend off the lumps
as we got close to them.

“Well, in all my born days I never sailed a boat among a lot of
paving-stones ’afore,” said Tom. “I suppose they was blowed up out of
the mountain.”

This made us laugh, but the work of shoving off the floating pumice
stone from the boat was very severe, and we had several times to shorten
sail while we rested from the labour; but by the middle of the afternoon
the pieces began to get fewer and fewer, and before sunset the surface
of the sea was clear of them, and we could steer our course without let
or hindrance.

In the middle watch, under the smoke, I saw (it was my watch) what
looked like a black mass streaked with threads of fiery gold. And when I
was relieved by Tom, he told me that that must be the side of the fiery
mountain; and sure enough when I awoke after daylight, there, right
ahead of us, towered a great mountain out of the sea, crowned by a mass
of smoke.

Near the top the mountain was black and bare, but lower down its sides
were clothed with forests, through which the liquid fire poured out of
the crater had cut broad gashes.

Tom, who was steering, was heading away so as to pass to the north of
the island, which we were rapidly doing; and Bill was lacing some
palm-leaf mats together to set as a square-sail, a task in which I at
once joined him.




                              CHAPTER IX.
                         PURSUED BY CANNIBALS.


We rapidly “rose” the lower part of the island, and here and there among
the trees we could see wreaths of silvery smoke, the brown thatch of
native huts, groves of bananas, and clearings, where the people grew
yams and other vegetables. As soon as we saw this, Bill Seaman and
myself were for landing at once; but a heavy surf which was beating on
the shore prevented this, and Tom said he would not consent to landing
at any place until it was absolutely necessary to get food or water,
unless he saw white men, for many of the inhabitants of the South Sea
Islands were cannibals, and, if we fell into their hands, would think
nothing of killing and eating us.

We skirted along the northern shore, and soon saw that Tom had been
right in saying that the burning mountain was probably in the middle of
a group of islands, for by mid-day we could see the tops of other
islands away to the northward and westward.

We now debated what we should do, and after much argument decided we
should coast along the shore of the large island of which the fiery
mountain formed the centre, and look for some signs of the house of a
trader or missionary; and if we saw one, to land there at once and make
known our story.

Along the lee-side of the island we found there was no surf, but the
shore sloped down into the sea, fringed by a belt of sand of silvery
whiteness, the outline being here and there broken by small creeks
running up inland; but the fair beauty of the scene was marred by broad
scars where the liquid fire from the mountain was pouring into the sea,
and by patches where tree, shrub, and hut had been involved in one
common ruin and buried in ashes and cinders.

One of the streams of molten lava pouring into the sea caused clouds of
white steam to rise, and made the water so hot for a considerable
distance that the fish had all been killed, and were floating on the
surface half cooked.

To the meeting of fire and water we gave a wide berth, skirting round
the line of steam and heat, though we managed to pick up some of the
half-cooked fishes.

Soon after passing this we lost the wind, being cut off from the trades
by the bulk of the mountain, and having to resort to our paddles to get
the _Escape_ along, which was slow and tedious work; and though we saw
among the trees several villages composed of huts which consisted only
of roofs without any walls, we saw nowhere any signs of the habitations
of either missionary or trader.

Late in the afternoon we saw an entrance to a creek between two
overhanging rocks, and after much thought we decided that we would run
the risk of putting in there for the night.

Before paddling in we loaded our muskets and looked to their priming, in
case we should be attacked; but as we got inside the entrance, we saw
there were no signs of any inhabitants. So, tying our boat up to the
trunk of a tree close to the right-hand rock, we landed, and gave our
legs a stretch along the beach, for we had found ourselves much cramped
by the close quarters aboard of our little craft.

As soon as we had, as Bill said, got the kinks out of our legs, Tom set
us to work to clear out and restow our stores, which had been pretty
well tossed about while we were passing through the waves caused by the
explosions of the volcano and the consequent earthquakes.

We found, indeed, that it was fortunate we had come in, for the greater
portion of our stock of fresh water had been spoiled or capsized, and we
took some time in replenishing it from a spring, and it was quite dark
before we had got all things to rights and restowed.

I and Bill were about to light a fire on the beach to cook our supper,
when Tom said,—

“For goodness’ sake, don’t be such fools; we don’t know nothing of what
sort of folks there be in the island, and if they see fire we may have a
lot of murdering cannibals down atop of us afore ever we know where we
are.”

“But it’s cold, mate, and I want to roast some corn. It’s bad eating dry
corn, like a horse,” said Bill.

“Very true,” said Tom; “but I fancy there’s a sort of cave just here,
and we can make a fire inside and sleep there warm and comfortable.”

“Where away, Tom?” I asked.

“Not thirty fathoms away. Now, come on, as I marked it;” and following
Tom we came to a hole in the rock which was almost hidden by a mass of
creepers, and drawing them aside he told one of us to go in with an
armful of dry leaves and set them on fire to see what it was like.

Both Bill and I were too much afraid to go into the cave in the dark,
for fear we might come across some wild beast; so Tom, laughing at our
fears, stooped down and went in alone. He soon had a fire of dry leaves
burning, and called us to come, for there was no danger; and now that
there was a light we did not hesitate, and found ourselves in a cave
about twenty feet long by twelve wide and seven high, the floor of which
was covered with fine, dry, white sand, while the roof and walls were of
a dark, rough rock.

“There, mates,” said Tom; “there’s a bedroom fit for a king. Now, as
we’re near men, we can’t all sleep at once; so as soon as we’ve had our
supper we’ll settle about watches.”

Bill said that as he was cook he would have the morning, and Tom agreed
that he should keep the first and I the middle watch.

Bill and I were soon asleep, for we were thoroughly tired; and I believe
that Tom took pity on us both, for when he roused me out I am sure that
the greater part of the night had passed away.

He had been walking up and down between the cave and the boat, carrying
a musket, and told me to do the same, and to be careful to notice the
smallest sounds. I said I would, and he then pointed out the position of
the Southern Cross, and where it should reach before I called Bill, and
went to his well-earned rest.

I walked up and down as I was told, though I must confess that I felt a
most undeniable longing to sit down; but as, when I once leaned up
against a palm tree, I found that I began to nod and dropped my musket,
I refrained, and walked up and down steadily until the Southern Cross
told me it was time to rouse Bill out.

He protested that he had only just lain down, and would not believe that
the time for his watch had come; and it was not until I threatened to
douse him with cold water that he would turn out and relieve me. I gave
him the same orders as Tom had given me, and warned him to be specially
careful when he made up the fire, so that no smoke should escape out of
our cave, lest it might be seen by the natives.

I lay down again as soon as he was on watch, and was asleep in a moment.
From my sleep I was awaked by Tom shouting out, “What’s up? There’s a
musket-shot!” and we both rushed out of the cave, and found that Bill
was nowhere to be seen.

Tom and I at once seized our muskets, saw that the boat was ready to
shove off at a moment’s notice, and called out to Bill to know where he
was.

Almost directly afterwards we saw a man running towards us, who fell
down at our feet and caught hold of our knees; and then, before we could
make out what it meant, we heard another shot, and saw Bill burst from
some trees near, his musket in his hands still smoking, and crying,
“Jump into the boat and shove off; there are a whole heap of people
after me.”

We all jumped into the boat, followed by the stranger, who had nothing
on him but a necklace of sharks’ teeth and shells, who said, “Plenty bad
mans want kiki[1] me.”

We seized our paddles, and began to pull out of the creek, and were only
just in time; for some twenty men, armed with spears and arrows, came
rushing on the beach and let fly at us.

Our new companion seized a musket and fired at them in return, knocking
over a great big fellow who seemed to be the leader. This stopped them
for a moment, but evidently they did not mean to let us off easily, for
half a dozen or more plunged into the water and began to swim after us.

We paddled away for dear life, but the swimmers swam so fast that we saw
they would soon catch us up unless something stopped them. “Pull, lads,
pull for your lives!” cried Tom.

“Ay,” said Bill, “pull all you know. They’re murdering cannibals, and
had killed one man, and were going to kill this fellow, when I shot one
who was going to knock him over the head with a big club.”

We pulled with all our might, and got out from between the two rocks,
with the swimmers only two or three fathoms astern of us, and straining
every nerve to catch us up. It was fortunate for us in one way that they
were so close, for their friends ashore were afraid to shoot their
arrows at us, for fear of hitting their comrades in the water.

The man Bill had rescued wanted to fire another shot, saying, “Plenty
bad mans. Kill white man. Kiki them. Kiki white Mary[2] three moons.”

Tom, however, said he would not fire again unless it was necessary, and
told the stranger to take my paddle, while I reloaded the muskets that
had been fired, and came aft to be ready to resist any man that might
catch hold of the boat.

The old boat went through the water as fast as my companions could urge
her; but still the swimmers gained, and presently the leading man took a
tomahawk from his belt and hurled it at me.

If I had not seen it I should not have believed that a swimmer could
have thrown a weapon with such force. It came flying straight at me, and
if I had not dodged, it would have struck me dead; but it buried itself
in our deck without doing harm to any of us.

“Shall I fire, Tom?” I called out. “There’s another going to throw at
us.”

“Yes,” he said; “but take a careful aim.”

I raised the musket to my shoulder, and aimed at a man who had raised
himself up to throw his tomahawk, but I could scarcely bring myself to
press the trigger to take away a man’s life.

Before I did, the man hurled his tomahawk at me, which struck the musket
out of my hands, and it fell overboard, going off as it did so without
harm to any one.

“Come, Sam, that’ll never do,” said Tom; “take hold of my oar,” and he
picked up another musket, and taking steady aim fired, and wounded the
man who was now in front of the other swimmers, and not more than nine
feet away from us.

His companions took no notice of the wounded man, and still pressed on
in chase; so Tom fired again, and wounded another. Even this did not
stop them; and although he wounded one more, the others managed to get
up and catch hold of the boat.




[Illustration: “_The leading man took a tomahawk from his belt and
hurled it at me._” Page 94.]




We all boated our paddles and seized upon the muskets, which we clubbed,
and beat our assailants off; but one managed to get a footing on board,
and seized upon the man whom we had rescued, and endeavoured to stab him
with a knife made of hoop-iron. We were still busy beating off the
others, and had neither time nor opportunity to help our new friend; but
just as we had finished repulsing our other assailants, and were turning
to come to his assistance, we saw that he had managed to wrest the knife
from his opponent, and giving him two savage stabs he thrust him
overboard.

We again bent to our paddles, our guest telling us in broken English to
pull away from the island and steer for one which he pointed out down to
leeward. We soon got out from under the lee of the island, and made all
sail in the given direction, and then began to ask Bill how all the
trouble began.

“Well, mates, you know how as I had the morning watch; and when Sam
roused me out, I took the musket and marched up and down like a sojer on
sentry-go, and heard never a sound, till just about when it began to get
light I thought I would go up above the creek for a bit and look about.
Well, so I went up through some trees, and then I came to a sort of a
path, and went along for a matter of two or maybe three hundred yards,
and then I thought I heard some men a-talking. I drops down at once on
all fours, and begins to creep along towards them through the bushes;
and I comes after a bit to the edge of an open space in the midst of
which there was a big tree, and under the tree was an open hut in which
there were an idol a-standing, with necklaces and all manner of things
on it.

“In front of the hut there were a fire burning and a matter of thirty or
forty men around it, and some one were cutting up a dead man, and two
other bodies was a-lying on the ground, and this chap here were tied up
to a post. I didn’t feel over comfortable, and thought as how I’d better
be making tracks for the boat, when I sees one of the cannibals cut this
fellow adrift and bring him out in the middle, and was just a-going to
knock him on the head, when I fires and he falls. Our chum here he runs
to me, and we both runs as hard as we could with all the other chaps
after us hot-foot, and I a-ramming a cartridge into my gun, and so down
we comes. And when I’d loaded I turned round, and then I sees a big chap
close after me with a spear; so I up and let fly at him so close as I
almost touched him. And then as he falls I run again and finds you and
the boat all ready, and Johnny here aboard of her. And the rest—why,
mates, you knows it as well as I do.”

“Thank ye, Bill,” said Tom. “It’s lucky it’s all figured out as it has,
and we’ve saved Johnny’s life, as you call him; but mind, you had no
business to go cruising about when you were on the lookout, and next
time as it happens Sam here and I will have to reckon with you for it.”

While Bill had been telling his story, the man he had rescued was
sitting down looking alternately at the island we had left and the one
we were steering for, and gnawing away at a piece of pork we had given
him in a manner that showed that at all events his appetite had not been
impaired by the narrow shave he had had of being killed and eaten.

“Here, Johnny,” said Tom; “you savey English. You spin us your yarn, and
tell us who you are, and where you hail from, and what brought you into
the fix you were in.”

-----

[1] Eat.

[2] Woman.




                               CHAPTER X.
                         A DESPERATE STRUGGLE.


“Certain, sir, me speak Englis’; me live along a white man two yam time;
me talky all proper.” And then, as if to prove his intimate acquaintance
with our language, he gave a volley of oaths, which for piquancy and
nautical flavour it would be hard to surpass.

“Here, stow that, mate; we want no swearing in this craft.”

“Hi! what? You be missionally man—no speak ’trong? Englis’ man,
’Mellican man, he speak people so.”

“Never mind; just talk without any Englis’ man or ’Mellican man palaver,
as you call it. Who are you?”

“Me? Why, me be one big man, son one chief. Fader he name Wanga; me him
name Calla. Fader he lib along of there,” pointing to the island we were
steering for. “Aneitou him name. One white he stay there comprar[3]
copra, bechmer, shell—all kind. Now one moon and one bit, me come to
here for find copra, slug, sandalwood, and make plenty trade what time
mountain he blow. Dem island nigger say he be me, and catch me” (and on
his fingers he counted carefully). “Two ten and two men live along of
me. Plenty kiki. Kiki one and two ten, and then come where him boy come.
Kill one man, two man, and make right kill me, when white boy he shoot,
and nigger he tumble so.”

“Well, now, in your island—Aneitou, you call it—you say there’s a
white man.”

“One man live there many yam time, and what time ship come plenty square
gin. My! den he drink.”

“When does a ship come?”

“Sometime one yam time, sometime two, sometime three yam time.”

“You see, mates, there’s a chance. A ship looks in once in one, two, or
three years; and I suppose this white man is some drunken old
beach-comber. Anyway, we won’t be eaten there,” said Tom.

“What are you looking at, Johnny,” interrupted Bill, for he noticed that
Calla was evidently anxiously looking at the island we had left.

“Be still, white man. Man flog war-drum for fight. Me look see where
war-canoe come.”

“What?” we cried all together; “a war-canoe in chase of us! Do you see
one?”

“No, me no see; but me sabey what time man flog war-drum, all same that.
Plenty soon all man go for war-canoe.”

We had not noticed any sound; but now, listening intently, we could
catch a few weird notes drifting down the wind towards us.

“Him plenty bad,” said Calla. “Him call five plenty big canoe. One canoe
him have men four ten, five ten; come along plenty quick.”

“I hope the wind’ll hold, lads,” said Tom; “these big canoes go as fast
as a ship with stuns’ls both sides.”

Though we were tired, we got out our paddles and oar, and rigged up
another mat or two as studding-sails, so as to make as much headway as
possible, and get within sight of Aneitou, whose people Calla told us
would send out their canoes to meet those from the volcanic island, if
they saw them coming.

We paddled and pulled, taking turns to steer, Calla doing yeoman service
at a paddle; but after an hour or so, during which we had made some ten
or twelve miles, and were about half-way across, we could hear the
sounds of the war-drums astern of us. Calla laid in his paddle, and
wanted to climb up our mast; but Tom pulled him down, for fear of
capsizing the boat.

“Me want see how many canoe come. Plenty big chief live along of they.
Big drum, big god, they bring in canoe.”

“Never mind now, Johnny; wait a bit. We’ll be able to see them from the
deck soon. Paddle away.”

We kept on, straining every nerve, and the breeze fortunately freshening
we made good way towards Aneitou; but the sound of the war-drums of our
pursuers became louder and louder, and soon Calla, jumping up again,
declared he could see them coming, and made us understand that before
ever we could reach Aneitou they would be up with us.

“But, I say, Johnny,” I asked, “where are your canoes from your island?
They must hear the drums now.”

Calla answered, “That live for true; but s’pose hear drum—man run one
side, where canoe he be, and men make get bow and spear, make long
time.”

“Give way, lads,” said Tom. “It’s no use wasting our breath talking. The
nearer we get to this fellow’s island, the better chance we have. It’s a
bad business, Sam, that you let that musket fall overboard. We have none
now for Calla, who could use one well.”

Tom, when he had said this, paddled away some time in silence, Bill
pulling the oar, and I steering; but the sound of the drums of our
pursuers came nearer, and at last Tom said, “I can stand this no
longer,” and laying in his paddle looked to the loading of our muskets,
and cutting up some bullets into quarters he put them in on the top of
the ordinary charge, and saw that the flints were properly fixed and
touch-holes clear.

When he had done this he stood up and said, “I can see the canoes now.
There are five, as Calla said—great big double ones; and besides the
men paddling, there are a lot of chaps up on a great platform
amidships.”

“How long before they’ll be up with us?” I asked. “Can we fetch Aneitou
before they catch us?”

Tom looked round and said, “I scarcely dare say that. There’s a point as
runs out, where maybe we might do it; but there’s such a surf a-tumbling
on it as would smash up us and the _Escape_, and all belonging to us.”

“Have a good look, mate, and see if there mayn’t be a break in the
surf,” I said.

Calla, who had been listening to what we were saying, now got up and
stood alongside Tom, and pointed out what to him had been
undistinguishable—half a dozen black spots falling and rising on the
surface of the sea near the point.

“There, them be Aneitou canoe. White man he come along of them.”

“How can you tell?” said Tom.

“Me sabey him canoe.” And then looking to windward at our pursuers,
Calla said, “Now plenty soon big corroboree. Aneitou men and Paraka men”
(Paraka was the name of the volcanic island) “come all one time to we.”

“Pull away lads, pull away,” cried Tom; “as Calla says, we shall be
saved yet, though I must own I thought at one time we should be caught.
I own it ain’t so much the being killed I don’t like, as the being eaten
after.”

“Why, what difference can that make?” said Bill and I together.

“Why, I don’t know as it makes any difference, but I owns as I should
like to be buried shipshape and Bristol fashion, sewed up in a hammock
with a twenty-four pound shot at my feet and a stitch through my nose.”

As we pulled along after this discussion, the drums of our pursuers
sounded closer and closer; and presently, mingled with their deep boom,
we could hear the war-song of the men who occupied their fighting-decks.

I looked round and saw astern of us, not more than five hundred yards
away, the five great double canoes, with their lofty prows ornamented
with human hair, skulls, and mother-of-pearl, while high up on their
platforms, surrounded by warriors armed with spears and bows, were the
sacred drums, on which fellows fantastically painted in white, red, and
yellow were vigorously beating a kind of tune, to which the paddles kept
time, making their strange craft fly through the water.

As far as I could make out, there were about thirty paddles in each of
the canoes, and some twenty warriors on the platform; so that fifty men,
as Calla had said, were about the complement of each canoe.

“O Tom,” I said, “do shoot at them; they’re so close.”

“Not yet, mate; wait a bit. We shouldn’t do them no harm now, and every
inch brings us nearer to Calla’s friends. Hark! don’t you hear their
drums and war-song now?”

Certainly the sound came up to us against the wind, and looking in that
direction I saw the six canoes Calla had said were coming to our relief
paddling up against wind and sea in a smother of foam, while from a pole
on board one of them there floated a tiny flag, which I could not
distinguish.

Calla, when he heard the sound of the drums and songs of his
fellow-islanders, laid in his paddle, and seizing on an axe and knife
commenced a dance in which he defied his late captors, accompanying it
with screeches and howls of which I should have thought no human throat
could be capable.

Closer and closer drew the canoes from Paraka, but still faster did we
run down on those from Aneitou; and before Tom thought it well to open
fire on our pursuers, we were passing through the fleet of our friends.
And on the deck of the one on which we had seen the pole and flag, which
we now made out to be an English red ensign, we could see mounted a
small cannon, and standing by its breech a white man with a lighted
match in his hand.

He hailed us as we passed to shorten sail and round to, and, if we had
muskets, to open fire on the men of Paraka; and almost immediately his
cannon rang out, pouring death and destruction amid the crew of the
biggest of his opponents’ canoes.

We doused the mats we had as studding-sails, and took in our other
sails; but by the time we had done so, we were at least a quarter of a
mile from the two fleets of canoes, which had now met and grappled, and
all whose occupants were by this time engaged in deadly conflict.

“Well, mates,” said Tom, “I suppose we must go and lend a hand. There’s
hot work going on there, and it’s only fair that we should help those
who came out to help us.”

No urging on his part was necessary, and we buckled to to pull back to
where the fight was going on; but before we could reach the scene of
conflict the fortune of the day had declared pretty decisively in favour
of our friends.

The canoe which carried the white man had riddled one of the hulls of
the double canoe carrying the leader of the men of Paraka, and in
sinking it had so dragged down its twin that the whole fabric had
capsized, and her crew, or such of them as were still alive, were
struggling in the water.

Calla was mad with desire for fight, and it was not long before we got
up near to the canoes. At first Tom thought it would be best to lay off
and use our muskets, but we could not distinguish friend from foe; so,
arming ourselves with trade hatchets stuck in our belts, we laid our
boat alongside the canoe on board which the Englishman was, and
springing on board, made our painter fast round one of her stern heads,
and then forced our way to where our countryman was fighting at the head
of his followers. But by the time we had reached him the men of Paraka
had had enough, and two of their canoes, which were able to do so,
sought safety in flight.

The others remained in the hands of the men of Aneitou, who secured such
of the occupants as were still alive with lashings of sinnet, and then
looked after their own dead and wounded.

Some of the Paraka men seemed to prefer to trust themselves to the waves
to remaining in the hands of their enemies; but they gained little by
doing so, for volleys of arrows were fired at them as they swam, and
some of the more eager of the warriors of Aneitou plunged into the water
in pursuit, and the conflict which had ended in the canoes began afresh
in the sea.

Calla, with cries of joy, rushed to an old man, who was in full
war-paint, and whose necklaces and bracelets of shells and beads and
lofty head-dress of feathers seemed to denote a chief, and who held in
his hand a rugged club, clotted with brains and gore, and kneeling down
before him began a long and voluble speech, pointing the while to the
two fugitive canoes.

The old chief was none other than Calla’s father, Wanga, and he raised
up his son, and calling to some of his men gave orders which we could
not understand, but of which the purport was soon evident, for the two
least damaged of the canoes of Aneitou were hastily manned with
unwounded crews, and their fighting-decks filled with warriors, among
whom Calla took a prominent position, being easily distinguished, he
alone being unadorned with war-paint; and soon these two were darting
over the waves in pursuit of the beaten and flying men of Paraka.

While this was going on, we were speaking to the white man, who, when we
came to where he was standing, said, “Why, where on earth did ye drop
from? A shipwreck, I s’pose. How long ago? Ye’ve rigged that craft of
yours up on some island.”

Tom told him our story in as few words as he could, and said how
thankful we were to have met him, and be rescued from being killed,
cooked, and eaten, which would doubtless have been our fate if we had
fallen into the hands of the Paraka cannibals.

“That ’ud be about your lot anywheres here, for all of ’em eat men; only
as how as you’ve brought off Calla, and his father’s a big man in his
island, you may be safe for a time.”

“Well, but how do you live among them? Why haven’t they eaten you?”

“Oh, I’ve been too useful to ’em for ’em to want to eat me; and,
besides, an old shellback such as I am would be too tough to make
anything but soup of. But now, mates, let’s be getting home again; and
when we come to my shanty, which is just behind the point where the
canoes came from, we can have a palaver, and overhaul all our logs. I’ll
come along of you in your craft and pilot you in. Can you stow a couple
or four black fellows and their paddles? They’ll help you along.”

We eagerly agreed to the help of the natives, who with their great
carved paddles certainly added much to our speed.

-----

[3] Buy.




                              CHAPTER XI.
                              BRISTOL BOB.


“Well, this here be a queer craft, and no mistake,” said our new friend,
who told us his name was “Bristol Bob,” or “Bob” for short, when he had
squatted down on the after-deck alongside of Tom, who was steering.

“Now, mates, fighting’s thirsty work; haven’t you ever a drop to drink,”
asked Bristol Bob, “and a bit of bacca?”

I at once got him a drink of water, and said I’d hunt up some tobacco
and a pipe for him.

“Water, lad? Well, I’ll have a drink; but haven’t you got anything
better—no rum nor square gin?”

“There is a bottle of spirits, which we have kept; but it’s stowed away,
and I can’t get it out unless we unstow the whole boat,” I answered.

“Never mind,” replied Bristol Bob, “I can do without it till we land.
Fancy, lads, it’s three months since I’ve had a tot of grog, and till
another trader comes round I shall have to go thirsty.”

All three of us—Tom, Bill, and myself—did not much care about this,
for on board the _Golden Fleece_ we had seen quite enough of the evils
of drunkenness, and looked at each other rather gloomily. But all of a
sudden I noticed that Bristol Bob’s shirt was stained with blood, and
said to him,—

“Why, you’re wounded.”

“Why, yes, lad,” he said, “I believe I am; but you won’t think much of
such a scratch as that when you’ve been knocking about as many years as
I have.”

Tom and I, however, insisted on examining his wound while Bill steered,
and pulling off his shirt we found under his left arm a small, punctured
wound from which the blood was oozing slowly.

“Ah,” said Tom, “it don’t seem much; it ain’t more than a prick.”

One of the natives, however, who was watching what we were about, when
he saw the wound, looked grave, and laying his paddle in, came and
looked at it.

He said something to Bristol Bob which we did not understand, but as
soon as he heard it the latter said,—

“Well, it don’t look much, but it may give me my walking ticket. Here,
take my knife—it’s sharp enough; and if you can feel anything inside,
cut it out.”

Tom felt carefully round the wound, and after some little time said,—

“I feel something like a splinter here, about an inch and a half from
the hole.”

“Cut it out, then,” said Bristol Bob. “Don’t be afeared, but cut well
in.”

Tom said he hardly liked to do so, but the wounded man insisted; so Tom
cut in carefully, and found imbedded in the flesh a splinter of bone as
sharp as a needle and two inches long, which he drew out and gave to his
patient.

“Ah,” he said, “’tis as I thought. It’s one of they bone-pointed arrows
has struck me, and they’s woundy poisonous things.”

I had now taken off my own shirt, which was but a ragged garment, and
begun to tear it into strips to bind the wound up, but Bristol Bob
said,—

“No, lad; don’t bind it up yet. We’ll burn it a bit first to get the
poison out. Have you a cartridge handy?”

“Why, yes,” I said. “What do you want done?”

“Just empty the powder into the cut, and set it alight, and you may give
me the bullet to chew the while.”

I and Tom looked aghast at this proposal; but Bristol Bob insisted, and
laid himself down so that the powder could be put in the wound, and
taking the bullet in his mouth he told us to fire it.

He rolled about and groaned while the powder was fizzing and sputtering,
but less than we had expected; and when it was burned out he gave a long
breath, and said,—

“You can lash it up now, and put some oil or grease on it, if you have
any.”

Fortunately, we had brought a little cocoanut oil from Ring Island with
us, and soaking some rag in this we put it over the burnt wound, and
lashed it in place as well as we were able.

By the time this was done we were past the point from which the canoes
had put out, and saw behind it a large bay, in one corner of which was a
little island some three hundred yards long and a hundred wide, on which
was a hut with whitewashed walls standing in the middle of a grove of
bananas.

“There’s my shanty, lads,” said Bristol Bob, who was smoking his pipe as
if nothing was the matter with him. “I finds it best to be away from the
mainland, for none of these people is to be trusted over much; though
for the matter of that water don’t make much matter to them, for they
swims like fishes. Up there,” he said, pointing to the other side of the
bay, “is Wanga’s village—there where you see the cocoanuts growing in a
cluster.”

We steered for Bristol Bob’s island, and found behind it a perfectly
secure anchorage for the _Escape_, and moored her carefully, and cleared
out all her cargo.

Bristol Bob told us we were welcome to quarters in his house, which
consisted of two rooms, one of which was locked up, being a store, and
the other, twelve feet by twenty, was the living-room and bedroom all in
one.

Close by were half a dozen native huts, which were only like thatched
roofs resting on the ground, without walls, and open at both ends, in
which lived some of the natives who were in his employment.

The men, except those who had come back in the _Escape_ with us, were
away in the war-canoes; but a dozen women and a lot of children were
about, and soon carried up our traps to the house, where we found
Bristol Bob lying down on his bed groaning.

“Are you very bad?” said Tom. “What can we do for you?”

“Nought,” he replied. “It’s only the pain of the burn. But where’s that
bottle of grog you spoke about? I’ll have a tot, and that maybe will
send me to sleep.”

We tried to dissuade him from drinking while he was suffering from his
wound, but it was of no avail. He possessed himself of our bottle, and
drank more than half of it, with the addition of very little water; and
then he put the bottle under his head, saying that it would be handy if
he was thirsty, and soon after fell asleep.

The room was a queer place. In each corner was a sort of bed-place
furnished with blankets and rugs, on one of which Bristol Bob was
sleeping. In the middle was a rude table, not over clean, which, with
some stools and chests, completed the furniture.

We stowed away our belongings, and then, being somewhat hungry, we
thought of getting something to eat, and went outside to find a place
where we could cook; but one of the women, when she saw us making a
fire, made signs that she had something ready for us, and brought in a
large tin dish, in which was a sort of stew of fowls and salt pork, and
two great yams which had been roasted in the ashes, and put them on the
table, with some salt and capsicums.

As she left us when she had placed the food on the table, we supposed we
should have to eat, as we had hitherto been doing, with our knives, and
from the common dish; but Bill, who was always looking into holes and
corners, found a sort of cupboard in one corner of the room in which
were some coarse delft plates, steel forks, and pewter spoons, and also
some drinking-vessels.

“Here we are. We can eat more respectably now,” said Bill. “But, hark!
what’s that noise?”

Boom, boom, boom, came the sound of the huge drums of the natives, and
mingling with their notes were shouts of revelry and shrieks of horror.

Bristol Bob, who had been sleeping, breathing hard and uneasily, began
to move and toss on his bed, and presently sat up and stared around.

“What’s that?” he said. “The death-drums they’re beating for me?”

Tom at once went up to him and asked him how he was, and if he could do
anything for him.

“Who are you?” said the sick man, whose eyes were now lighted up with
the glare of fever. “Where do you come from?” And then, putting his hand
under the pillow, he seized upon the bottle, and putting it to his lips
took a long draught which almost emptied it.

“Ha!” he said, “I have it. Calla and Wanga are having a feast, and
they’ll murder and eat me. Come; there’s not a moment to be lost.”

As he said this, Bristol Bob sprang from his couch; and seizing an axe
which hung on the wall above it, he rushed out of his hut.

We followed him, wondering what he intended to do, and quickly as he
went we were close on his heels, as he made his way to a small mound
some thirty yards away. Here he stopped, and said,—

“Ha! ha! they shan’t eat me yet,” and then stooping down he began to
clear away some leaves and wood, and disclosed a small door set in the
ground and framed with stout posts. This he opened, and disclosed a
passage dug in the ground, down which he went, followed by Bill and me;
while Tom, who feared that Bristol Bob’s ravings might have some
meaning, stopped behind to close and bar the door.

At the end of the passage we came into a chamber about twelve feet
square every way, and here the wounded man struck a light with a flint
and steel, and lighted a rude cocoanut-oil lamp.

By its feeble rays we could see that here were stowed away four or five
kegs and a couple of small boxes. On one of the latter the madman, for
Bristol Bob, from the combined effects of spirits and fever, was now no
better than a maniac, placed the lamp, and then, with his axe, stove in
the head of one of the kegs, which to our horror we saw was full of
gun-powder.

The powder he poured on the floor near the other kegs, and then loosened
their staves by a blow from his axe, so that the powder they contained
would mix with that he had poured on the ground; and then he stood up
and laughed as he rubbed his hands.

“They think they’ll eat Bristol Bob? Not if I knows it. I’ll blow myself
up first.”

Bill and I stood aghast at his proceedings, and even watched Bristol Bob
reach for his lamp to light the powder without interfering or moving,
when Tom, who had secured the door, came down the passage, and saw at a
glance what was going on.

Without any pause or hesitation he dashed at the madman, and snatched
the lamp away and blew it out. Bristol Bob, with a roar like a wild
beast, seized the smouldering wick, and threw it on the powder, where it
lay smoking.

Tom, who was struggling with Bristol Bob, shouted to us to take the wick
off the powder, or we should be all blown up. I was so unmanned by
terror that I covered my eyes and waited for the explosion, paralyzed
with fear, and Bill has since owned to me that he was as frightened as I
was.

The time passed, and no explosion took place, though we could hear the
sound of the struggles of Tom and Bristol Bob as they rolled on the
ground, and the cries of the former to take the wick off the powder.

Finding that we were not blown up, I uncovered my eyes, and saw the wick
still lying on the powder, a dull red spot covered with grey ash at the
end of it; and mustering up all my resolution I stooped down, caught it
away, and extinguished it.

“That’s right,” I heard Tom say. “Here, one of you, help me with this
fellow—he’s most too much for me; and the other go up and unbar the
door, and let’s get out of this.”

I went to Tom’s help, and together we managed to get Bristol Bob down,
while Bill went up and unbarred and opened the door; and then, coming
down to our assistance, he helped to drag the poor fellow back to his
hut, where we placed him on his bed, and tied his hands and feet to
prevent his doing any more mischief. But now he seemed in a sort of
stupor.

This done, Tom replaced the dressing on his wound, and told Bill and me
to go back and close and cover up the door of the place where the powder
was. When this was done we came back to the hut. We found Tom sitting
down with his elbows on his knees, and holding his head between his
hands, while Bristol Bob moaned wearily on his couch; and always we
heard the weird sound of the native drums.

We spoke to Tom two or three times before he looked up, and when he did
he said,—

“I can’t make it out why the powder did not fire. It must have been damp
or something; but anyway, ’tis only by the mercy of God we have been
saved. Let us kneel down and thank Him for preserving us from great
peril, and implore Him to guard us in the future as He has done in the
past.”

When we had finished, I said to him,—

“How is it that you are so different from all other sailors? On board
the _Fleece_, from the captain downwards, every one but you swore and
used bad language.”

“Not from all other sailors, Sam. I learned it aboard of my first ship.
Her captain was really a good man; but there’s no time to talk of these
matters now. I doubt not that Bristol Bob’s madness had some reason in
it, and that over at the chief’s village there’s murder and all sorts of
horrors going on. The sound of them drums goes right through me. Now, if
the idea gets in the savages’ heads to come after us, I don’t believe
Calla nor Wanga nor any of their chiefs could hinder them, so we must
keep a good lookout. I wish they had brought back the little cannon that
was in the canoe.”

“What do you suppose they’d do?” asked Bill.

“Why, they might kill and eat us.”

“Not really. Why can’t we get down to the _Escape_ and get away while
it’s dark?” I said.

“What! with all our provisions and water ashore, and leave this poor
fellow here?” said Tom. “No, we must keep a good lookout until they’re
all quiet, and then to-morrow we can make our plans for going away.”

Even as we were speaking, the drums were beaten with less fury, and the
shouts of the natives were less noisy and frequent; and after about
another half-hour they ceased altogether.

“Now,” said Tom, “you two fellows go to sleep. I’ll look after the sick
man to see if he wants anything. He seems pretty quiet now, so I’ll
unlash his hands and feet.”




                              CHAPTER XII.
                              A SAD EVENT.


I was so thoroughly tired that I fell asleep at once, and slept soundly;
and when I woke it was already broad daylight, and as I opened my eyes I
saw a tall form bending over me with a face painted red and white in
broad, horizontal stripes, and thought that cannibals were coming to
kill and eat me.

I sprang up with a yell, and called to Tom and Bill that our hour was
come, and that I was being killed. However, I was relieved by the
painted face which had so frightened me relaxing into a broad grin, and
hearing Calla say, for it was he,—

“What for you make big bobbery all same man die? Me Calla.”

I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and looked round. Tom was sitting by Bristol
Bob’s side, who was tossing restlessly on his bed and groaning, and Bill
was at the door of the hut washing himself.

Calla had come over from the mainland of Aneitou to inquire after us,
and to say that his father, Wanga, wished us to come over to his village
in the course of the day.

I got up and went over to where Bristol Bob was lying, followed by
Calla, who, looking at him, said,—

“What make him sick? Plenty time him drink no be like this.”

Tom explained as well as he was able how we had found that the patient
was wounded, and the subsequent treatment, and how he had drunk a whole
bottle of spirits.

“Make see what thing make hole,” said Calla.

Tom, after some little hunting about, found the splinter of bone which
he had cut out in the corner of one of his pockets, and gave it to
Calla, who examined it eagerly.

After some minutes he said, pointing to the wounded man,—

“Him lib for die. Piece along of him inside.”

“What!” said Tom; “is there a bit inside him yet?”

“You watch,” said Calla; and giving a whistle, a man who had come over
to the little islet with him came into the hut.

To him Calla said something, and he went away, but presently returned,
bringing with him a quiver made of basket-work ornamented with shells
and sharks’ teeth, which he gave to Calla, who opened it and carefully
drew an arrow tipped with a splinter of bone, and putting the piece that
had been cut out of Bristol Bob by it, said,—

“You see make same here,” pointing to the middle of the head of the
arrow.

Looking carefully, we saw that the bone tip in its entirety was about
four inches long, and beautifully worked up, so that the end of it, for
more than an inch, was scarcely thicker than a pin, and that then it was
cut nearly through.

“You see him piece?” pointing to this long thin part. “Live along Bob.
Him die for sure. Plenty bad.”

“Can’t we cut it out as we did the other?” asked Bill.

“No pican white man,” said Calla. “Him along a bone. No can see or
catch.”

This sentence of death passed upon the poor fellow affected us very
much, and we were intensely disgusted when Calla quite coolly proposed
to knock him on the head at once, as he would suffer great pain, and
would not again recover consciousness, or, as Calla put it, “Peak along
man sabey it.”

To this, of course, we would not consent, and also told Calla that we
could not leave the wounded man to go and see his father.

Calla seemed very much displeased about this, and said,—

“Make plenty bobbery along man no lib. He no fit for kiki. What you
want?” But seeing that we were determined to remain, he went away and
left us to ourselves.

“Not much civilization about that fellow,” I said. “Although he makes
out he ‘live along of white man plenty time,’ I believe he’s just as big
a cannibal as the rest of them.”

“Yes,” said Tom. “And though he may think for a time of our having saved
his life, if it runs with his interests to kill us after a time, he will
do so.”

In this we afterwards found we wronged poor Calla.

“Well, mate,” I said, “what are we to do?”

“Why, first and foremost, we must look after this poor fellow, and when
he’s dead, bury him decent like; and after that we must see about
getting away. I daresay somewhere down these islands we may find a
missionary settlement or a decent trader; anyways, we mustn’t let these
people think we’re going, or they’ll find means to stop us. Now, one of
you go and find the old woman that gave us supper last night, and make
her understand we should like some breakfast.”

I went out to look for the woman, and found that now several men had
come to the island, who were the husbands of the women we had seen the
day before; and one of them, who possessed a very scanty stock of
English, informed me he was “Massa’s bos’n,” and that the others were
his “sailor men.”

Bos’n, as he was always called, when I said we wanted “kiki,” called to
some women, and I soon had the satisfaction of seeing the cooking
operations in full progress, and then followed Bos’n to a place where he
was evidently very anxious that I should come.

Judge of my surprise, on reaching the spot, which was on the shore of
the islet, to find, under a thatched roof which covered her, and in a
dock cut out of the coral rock, a cutter of about seven tons, with a
mast fitted to lower and raise like that of a Thames barge, and with all
her sails, spars, and rigging carefully stowed and in good order.

In such a craft I knew that one could easily make a voyage of almost any
distance; and lifting up a hatch that covered a sort of well, I found
that her below-deck arrangements were as good as those above, and that
she had a couple of eighteen-gallon casks for storing water, while on
her deck were ring-bolts and fittings for a small gun—doubtless the one
which Bristol Bob had taken with him in the war-canoe in the fight
against the people of Paraka.

Full of this discovery, I hastened back to the hut, and told my
companions of it. They were both delighted, and said that we should, if
necessary, be able to make our escape in her more comfortably and easily
than in our old craft, which was but a clumsy contrivance after all.

While we were talking, Bristol Bob raised himself up in his bed, and
said,—

“Hallo! Who are you, and what d’ye want? What ship d’ye come from?”

Tom at once asked him if he did not remember the fight of the day
before, and his being wounded. After some time he said he did, and then
Tom told him of what Calla said about his wound.

“Well, just have a look, will you? But I expects I has my walking ticket
anyways.”

Tom took the dressings off the wound; but it was now so painful that
Bristol Bob refused to allow him to probe it properly or handle it, so
he put fresh dressings on.

Bristol Bob now said,—

“I don’t suppose I have long to live, and I had best spin my yarn to you
afore I go. You have come from an island away to windward, where you
landed after being left adrift in your boat. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” said Tom; “and people had been there before, and one man’s
skeleton we buried. Some of the others had been buried, and the rest had
evidently gone away long before.”

“Well,” said Bristol Bob, “I’ve been here at Aneitou now a matter of
seven year, and have traded a bit. But those people who were on that
island ran their boat ashore on Paraka before ever I came here, and all
of them were eaten up; and only because I have been useful to these
people by making trade for them have I escaped being eaten. Now, listen.
There’s a tidy boat of mine on the island here, and aboard of her you
may go ’most anywheres; and if you leaves here and steers WSW. by
compass—there’s a compass in my sea-chest—you will, after about ten
days, get to an island called Leviji, where there are missionaries. You
must mind and not land anywhere before, unless you make out white men
ashore; and even then it’s best not, for many a beach-comber is as bad
as any savage among them. You will know the missionaries’ island by its
having a mountain with two separate peaks rising up to the same height
in the middle.”

“Well, well,” said Tom, “don’t you trouble about that now. We shall
manage for ourselves. But what can we do for you now?”

“Nothing, lad, except give me a drink of water. My mouth and throat is
that parched I can scarce speak.”

Tom held a gourd to the sick man’s lips, who drank eagerly, and then
said,—

“Thanks, lad. I was even once like you; but my life has been a sad and
bitter one, and now it’s ending, there’s no hope for me.”

“Don’t say that,” answered Tom. “I ain’t learned to say much, but one
thing I’m certain of, that in the Bible forgiveness is promised to all.”

“How, now? Forgiveness for me? No, lad, I’m too bad for that.”

“Listen,” said Tom, and getting the tattered Bible we had found in the
dead man’s hut on Ring Island, he read to Bristol Bob the glorious
promises of the Christian religion, and also prayed with him, Bill and I
kneeling down with him and joining in the prayers.

After we had finished, Bristol Bob said he felt happier, and trusted
that he indeed had found mercy, and asked again for water to drink. But
when Tom held a pannikin to his mouth, he was seized with a convulsive
shuddering, and dashed it away.

We tried to pour some into his mouth, but all our efforts were
fruitless, and we had, after some time, to give up the attempt.

“I know what it is, boys,” said poor Bob. “I’ve seen a many die from
these arrow wounds. I don’t know what it is, whether it’s the poison of
the bone arrow or what, but it’s an awful death. I may have a short time
during which I can speak, and I will tell you all I can how to get
away.”

The poor fellow now told us of his magazine, of his visit to which
during the night he had neither remembrance nor idea, and said that,
besides the powder in the two boxes, we should find some beads and
corals of considerable value, a small bag of pearls, and about seventy
pounds in money. This, he told us, we could keep for ourselves; and
then, as soon as he was dead, he begged us to bury him out at sea, so
that he could not be dug up and eaten; and that done, he advised us to
get away to Leviji as quick as we could. He also said that we were to
trust none of the natives, not even Calla, with our plans; but if we had
to employ any one, that it should be Bos’n, who he said he thought was
the best man on the islands.

While he was speaking, he was often interrupted by convulsive attacks,
which at last became so continuous and so bad that he could no longer
talk. Of the scene of horror that ensued while he was wrestling with the
frightful disease of tetanus, or lockjaw, I will say nothing—the
remembrance of it is even now too dreadful to me; but when, an hour
before sunset, he died, we all felt that it was a happy release.

In his storeroom we found some canvas and needles, and as soon as his
body was cold, Tom set to work and sewed him up in a seaman’s shroud,
and lashed some heavy rocks to his feet to sink his body to the bottom
of the sea.

Before all was ready, the night had nearly passed, and we lay down to
rest for a while, intending, as soon as we woke, to carry the dead body
down to the _Escape_, and, paddling her out into the bay, commit it to
the deep, in accordance with the wishes Bristol Bob had expressed while
still able to speak.

We had not slept long before we were awaked by Calla, who, as soon as
the sun had risen, had come over to the little island with a party of
armed men to insist upon our going over to the mainland to see his
father, Wanga.

We all said that we would go as soon as we had buried the dead man, but
not before; but Calla said that we were to come at once, and that the
dead body should be brought along with us.

To this we strongly objected, and when Calla told some men to take up
the body and carry it away, Tom knocked the foremost of them down. The
others, seeing how their comrade had been treated, were about to strike
at Tom with their tomahawks; but Bill and I, seizing our muskets,
presented them at Calla, and said that if a single blow were struck we
would shoot him.

Tom, too, got his musket, and said that what the dead man had wished
should be carried out, and that he would die before he was prevented.

Calla, who seemed to have not overmuch heart in the business, and was,
as was afterwards proved, less of a savage than his countrymen, said
something to them in his own language, on which they sulkily withdrew,
while he tried to prevent our being angry at what had occurred. He
said,—

“You sabe Bristol Bob him live along o’ we plenty long time—seven yam
time. Him be all one same chief, same my fader Wanga. Make plenty one
big bobbery for him die. No kiki he.”

“Never mind, Calla,” Bob said. “We have to do as he told us, and we are
going to bury him in the sea.”

“Plenty much queer white man. No care for man kiki he. Fish kiki he say
plenty good.”

“Never mind, Calla. We shall do what he said; and afterwards, if your
father wants to see us, we will come over to him.”

Calla left us and went away with his men, and we could see that he had
plenty of trouble in controlling them; and indeed, if he had not been
the son of the great chief of the island, I doubt not that he would have
been unable to do so.




                             CHAPTER XIII.
                             IN CAPTIVITY.


As soon as we were left alone we called Bos’n, who alone of all the men
that had lived on the island was to be seen, the rest, with their wives
and families, having left as soon as they heard of Bristol Bob’s death;
and with his help we carried the dead man carefully and reverently down
to the boat, and putting off into deep water, launched him overboard,
there to remain till that day when the sea shall render up her secrets.

Tom said a short prayer, and then we paddled back again to the shore. As
soon as we landed we set about preparing the new boat for our voyage,
filling her casks with water, as well as the beakers from the _Escape_,
and stowing away all we could think of as provisions. Fortunately on the
islet there were several bread-fruit trees and a plantation of yams, and
Bos’n, who said he would throw in his lot with us, collected a quantity
of these, and piled them up alongside the boat.

As soon as the casks were filled, Tom said he would go to the magazine
to get the boxes we had seen there, and that in the meantime Bill and I
had better overhaul the storeroom, and see what was worth taking away
with us.

In the store we found all manner of trade goods—calico, beads,
hatchets, pipes, brass wire, nails, and other oddments—which might
either be useful to or attract the fancy of the savages, and also a
couple of harpoons and two coils of whale line.

We at once took the harpoons and lines down with us, as well as some
fishing-lines and hooks which were in the dead man’s chest, and the
compass, and then returned for the box with the money and pearls. When
we had stowed these away, Tom came down with one of the boxes from the
magazine, and said he wanted Bos’n to help him with the other, and told
us to go back and look about the hut for blankets, knives, cooking-gear,
and anything else that might be useful.

We set about this with a good will, and trotted backwards and forwards,
carrying down all we fancied would be useful. After a time, when I was
in the hut overhauling the sea-chest, I heard a scream from Bill, and
rushing out, found that he had been seized by a party of natives, some
of whom, when they saw me, rushed up, and before I had any chance to
resist, threw me on the ground, and lashed my feet together and my arms
by my side, so that it was impossible to move, and carried me and Bill,
who had been served in a like manner, to a canoe, in which they had come
over from the mainland.

We were laid on a platform, and some half-dozen fellows, painted in most
hideous patterns, squatted round, and the canoe was rapidly paddled to
the nearest village on the big island of Aneitou. The canoe soon reached
the shore, and we were carried up by our captors into the middle of a
cleared space surrounded by some half-dozen native huts, which were
simply long roofs of thatch, open at both ends, and here we were tied
upright to posts planted in the ground.

As soon as we had been placed in this position, a man came from one of
the huts and called out some orders, and presently from each hut came
two men, bearing a huge wooden drum, the ends of which were
fantastically carved. These drums were placed in a circle, round the
posts to which we were tied, and then the same man who had given the
order for them to be brought again shouted out commands; then six men,
painted white and red, but stark naked, came out, each carrying two
mallets, with long, elastic handles, with which they commenced to
belabour the drums in a regular rhythmic cadence.

Presently we heard the sound of distant drums answering those around us,
and soon shouts in the neighbouring woods added to the noise. How long
this may have gone on I cannot say, for I was in such pain from the
lashings which confined me cutting into my flesh like red-hot irons, was
so tormented by the rays of the sun beating on my unprotected head, and
in such an agony of parching thirst that moments seemed like hours; but
suddenly the drummers gave a grand flourish and ceased. After a moment
of intense stillness three beats were given on each drum, and instantly
from the huts and the woods around armed warriors rushed forth,
brandishing spears and tomahawks.

At first they came crowding round me and my companion in misfortune,
poor Bill, who cried out, “I say, Sam, d’ye think they’ll eat us alive
or kill us first?”—a question to which I could not give any answer, for
a big fellow was brandishing a tomahawk close to my eyes, and I was in
momentary expectation of having my brains dashed out.

After some minutes the man who had given the orders to the drummers
called out a few words, and instantly the noise and confusion ceased,
and all the people drew themselves up in small groups around the open
space, and in front of each group stood a warrior, who seemed to be a
sort of officer.

Again the man who gave orders, and who, we found, was Calla’s father,
Wanga, spoke, and the men in the groups squatted on the ground, while
the officers came and collected round the posts where we were lashed.

Wanga now called out for Calla, who came out of one of the huts without
arms and guarded by six men. Wanga now made a long harangue to the
people; and then, turning to Calla, he told him to speak.

We, of course, could not understand a word, but afterwards we learned
that Wanga had said that we had done wrong in not giving up the body of
Bristol Bob to Calla, and that he was to blame for not having insisted
on it.

Calla defended himself by saying that we had saved his life from the
people of Paraka, and that it was _tabu_ to touch a white man who had
died.

This was objected to, and Calla was told that he should, at all events,
have brought us over to the village; and he was then sent back into the
hut.

The posts to which we were lashed were now taken out of the ground, and
with us laid down, while three fellows, who wore necklaces of finger and
toe bones, and had whistles made out of thigh-bones, came and danced
round us, all the rest of the people remaining perfectly quiet.

While this was going on we heard a dull, smothered roar as of an
explosion, and the dancers, who we afterwards found were priests or
sorcerers, as well as all the people who were looking on, rushed down to
the beach.

I was lying close to Bill, and said, “I wonder what that is; it sounds
like the magazine on Bristol Bob’s island blown up.”

“So it is,” said Bill. “I hope Tom ain’t damaged, and that these beggars
won’t make him prisoner. As long as he’s free there’s hope for us.”

“Yes,” I answered, “we can trust Tom not to desert us; but I’m afraid he
must be a prisoner, and we shall soon see him here alongside of us.”

We had no time to speak any more, for a party of men came back from the
beach, and, under the direction of the three priests, took us up on
their shoulders, and carried us away at a trot along a narrow path
through the woods.

Occasionally our carriers halted to rest or gave way to others, and
sometimes we stopped in the middle of villages like the one we had been
first taken to, and were exposed to the curiosity of the women and
children (for all the men that were able had gone down to the muster of
the warriors of the island), and I am bound to say we received no mercy
at their hands. They pinched us, and scratched us, and tore off our
clothes to see if we were white all over, not caring how they hurt us in
doing so, and pulled out our hair; in fact, they showed themselves
experts in all the petty arts of torture, and if it had not been that
the priests seemed to be somewhat in a hurry, and never allowed a halt
in a village for more than ten minutes or so, I verily believe we should
have been pinched and scratched to death.

At last we arrived at a sort of temple, consisting of a thatched roof
supported on posts which were rudely fashioned into human figures. In
the middle of this building were two idols, a male and a female, on
which all the art and industry of the people had been lavished, with a
result that combined the grotesque and the horrible in an extraordinary
degree.




[Illustration: “_In front of these monstrous figures were piles of bones
and skulls._” Page 137.]




Their eyes were formed of huge oyster shells pierced in the middle, and
in their grinning mouths were double lines of boars’ tusks, so that the
faces seemed all eyes and teeth. Large wigs of cocoanut fibre covered
their heads, and round necks, arms, and legs were strings of beads,
shells, and human bones. In their right hand they held a monster fork,
like that used by their worshippers in their cannibal feasts, and on
these forks and in their left hands were great pieces of bleeding flesh.

In front of these monstrous and disgusting figures were piles of bones
and skulls, some of which had hair and flesh still adhering to them.
Lamps fed with cocoanut oil were hanging from the rafters, and these
lamps were made of human skulls; and as if nothing should be wanting to
complete the horror of the scene, huge pigs were rooting about among the
remains of humanity with which the ground was strewn.

When we arrived, the lumps of bleeding flesh were removed from the left
hands of the idols, and we were hung up in their place.

The men who had carried us here were now sent away, and having become
_tabu_ by entering into this holy place, as it was considered by the
people of Aneitou, they were while there not allowed to mix with their
fellows, but sent to an enclosure reserved for such purposes.

I and Bill were, it is not too much to say, in a state of dismal fright
and terror, and the lashings by which we were bound cut into our flesh
like bars of red-hot iron, while our lips were cracked and bleeding, and
we were the victims of a raging thirst.

After we had hung here for some time, some of the priests of the temple
came and cut us down, and we expected that we should at once be done to
death; but, after cutting us adrift, they took us a short distance away
into a cave, the entrance to which was closed with thick balks of timber
in which there was a small gateway.

Here we were thrust, and water was given us to drink, and the gate being
securely barred on the outside, we were left alone.

We instantly relieved our parching thirst, and then set to work to rub
each other to ease the pain caused by the lashings which had bound us.

After a time we felt more at ease, and began to consider what would
become of us.

“I expect they will kill and eat us,” said Bill; “but surely we can find
some way to escape. I would Tom were here; he’d know what to do.”

“I’m afraid Tom must be a prisoner or dead; but, anyway, let us search
round this place, and find if there is any way out. If we could get out,
and get to the beach, and steal a canoe, we might have a chance.”

We set to work to examine the entrance to the cave; but the gate and the
balks of timber in which it was set were too strong to give us any hope
of being able to break through them, so we soon gave up and began to
explore the cave itself.

We went in several directions, and found dark holes and passages, into
which we crept; but one and all came to an end before we had proceeded
far, until we reached the very last, which was only about three feet
high at the entrance, but which we found after a time grew lighter and
higher, and at last became a large cave, lighted by a small hole near
the top.

To this hole we tried to climb; but the rock had been cut away all
around it, so that it was perfectly inaccessible, although by the
natural roughness of the sides of the cave it was easy to climb up to
the roof everywhere else. Opposite the hole, but some fifteen feet from
it, was a sort of shelf; and to this we scrambled, so as to look out,
and we saw right opposite us the bay in which was Bristol Bob’s island.

The island itself we could also see, and the hillock and trees under
which the magazine was were blown up, and several of the huts were
destroyed, but the dock where the cutter was laid up we could not see,
so that we could not make out whether she were safe or not. Our old
_Escape_ we saw with some men in her, evidently taking her to Wanga’s
village, but on the island there was not a soul to be seen.

We sat some time on the shelf trying to get some idea into our heads as
to how the hole could be reached, and at last we got down and determined
to return to the part of the cave where we had been left by our jailers;
but first we looked round where we were, and in one corner we found a
pool of fresh water, which was a source of gladness to both of us, for
at all events we could make sure of not dying of thirst, and also have a
good wash whenever the fancy took us; and take us it did then and there,
for we were very dirty and sore, and a bathe did us all the good
imaginable.

When we got back to the front cave we found that it had not been visited
since we left; but before we had been there ten minutes the gate was
unbarred, and a plentiful supply of food—fish, pork, yams, bread-fruit,
and bananas—was brought to us, and it was signed to us that we should
eat.

We were both hungry, and fell to on the good things provided for us with
a hearty appetite, till, suddenly, Bill stopped eating, and said, “I
say, mate, they wants to fatten us up to eat us. I don’t fancy being
stuffed like a turkey in a coop.”

The idea took away my appetite at once, and not another mouthful could I
swallow; but, nevertheless, we determined to hide the food away, with
the idea that, if the priests found us apparently eating enormously, and
yet getting thinner and thinner, they would come to the conclusion that
we were worthless for fattening purposes, and would give up the
intention, and perchance let us go free.

Accordingly the remnants of our repast were stowed away in one of the
small side caves, and it now being night, Bill and I, huddling together
for warmth, lay down to sleep.




                              CHAPTER XIV.
                          A DIVE FOR LIBERTY.


Our sleep was broken and disturbed by the noise of drums in the temple,
and again and again we woke with a start, and thought that some one had
come to call us out to be offered up before the hideous idols, and as
often found that our alarm was only caused by a dream.

By the middle of the night the noise outside ceased, and we both being
thoroughly wearied out, slept soundly. All at once I was awaked by
feeling cold, wet hands on my throat and mouth, and struggled to free
myself and shout out; while Bill, roused by my struggles, grunted out,
“What’s up?”

A voice said, “No make bobbery. Be plenty quiet. Me be Calla come make
good for you.”

Evidently some one was watching, for we heard people outside speaking,
and the noise of the gate being unbarred. While this was doing, Calla
stole noiselessly away; and when one of the priests of the temple came
in, bearing a great, flaming torch of palm leaves, and searched about
the cave, he could only find me and Bill; so, giving us a couple of
kicks apiece, he went back and fastened the gate again, evidently
displeased at being disturbed.

As soon as he had gone and all was again quiet, Bill and I whispered
together, wondering where Calla had come from, and where he had gone.

“I have it,” I said, almost forgetting the necessity for speaking low,
but remembering myself in time. “Calla was wet; he must have come by the
water.”

“How could he?” answered Bill. “There’s no passage there.”

“Never mind,” I said; “that’s where he came from. Let’s get down there,
and see what we can.”

To get to the pool in the dark was easier said than done; but at last we
found our way to the part of the cave where it was, which was dimly
lighted by the hole in the side through which we had seen Bristol Bob’s
island, and we groped about to try to find some way by which Calla could
have got in.

Whilst we were thus engaged, we heard a long-drawn breath, and then a
rippling in the pool, and then we distinguished a dark form coming to
its shore.

“Hist! hist! me Calla,” he said as he emerged; and we hurried to him and
asked what he wanted, and what was the news of Tom.

“Oh! Tom he live plenty good. But now one time make go. Dem other men no
catch. Know eberyting. Me sabe dis hole no shut below—one time easy go
and come—make people tink plenty ting.”

Evidently Calla had dived in from the outside, and if we could manage to
dive as well, we might make our way out of our prison.

Calla proposed that we should dive down, and gave us the direction we
were to swim in; and Bill, who was a capital swimmer and diver,
according to European standards, slipped fearlessly into the pool, and
taking a long breath sank below its surface.

The dive, however, was beyond his capabilities, for he soon reappeared
puffing and blowing, and declared that he could not possibly manage it;
and when he had rested a bit, he told me he had gone down and down into
a sort of passage, where he could feel the rock on either side of him,
when he felt as if he would burst, and could endure it no longer, so he
had given himself a shove backwards, and returned to the surface.

“No be far,” said Calla; “see me go and come back one time;” and suiting
the action to the word he glided down through the water, and in about
four minutes returned with a handful of grass which he said he had
plucked on the outside.

Bill, encouraged by this, made another attempt, but like ill success
attended it; and as for me, I knew that if Bill could not dive out, it
was hopeless to think of my being able to do it.

Calla at first seemed very much annoyed; but after a bit he said, “Me
sabey,” and dived out of the cave, and soon returned bringing with him a
line of cocoanut fibre, and made us understand that he would haul us
through the passage.

To be dragged through an underground drain at the end of a rope was a
nervous piece of work, but to remain where we were meant danger and
captivity; whilst on the other side of the passage was freedom and
comparative safety, if Calla was to be trusted, and we did not take long
to make up our minds to consent to his proposal.

After a little discussion, Bill and I settled that he should be the
first to go; and he promised, if he got through safe, to tie a peculiar
knot in the end of the line to show me that he was all right.

We did not take long in securing the line to Bill, and then Calla took
the other end in his teeth, and the two together disappeared below the
surface. I waited and waited for Calla to come back, and the time seemed
intensely long before he again was with me with the piece of line.

I anxiously examined the end for Bill’s knot, and when I felt it and
learned that he was safely out of the cave, my joy was great, though I
was still in a great fright as to what would happen to me. Calla secured
the line round, me, so that I could not struggle, and telling me to keep
my mouth shut, put me in the pool. I felt myself sinking, and then being
dragged along, touching rock sometimes above, sometimes below, and
sometimes on either side of me; and I felt as if the drums of my ears
would be broken in, and a sense of oppression on my chest which was
almost intolerable. I thought that I would be constrained to open my
mouth and shout, and I know that if my limbs had been at liberty I
should have struck out, and would have added much to the difficulty of
the task Calla had set himself; but just when I could have endured no
longer, I felt myself emerge from the water, and was dragged to the bank
by Bill and Calla.

I blew like a porpoise while my lashing was being undone; and when I had
got some breath in my body again, Calla told Bill and me to follow him,
and that he would lead us to where Tom was.

We hurried along narrow paths, through tangled woods, and in a very
short time arrived at the shores of the bay in which Bristol Bob’s
island was. Here we found a canoe, into which we got, and paddled off
stealthily to the island, where we found Tom safe and sound, and Bristol
Bob’s little craft prepared for sea, and Bos’n with him.

I longed to ask him what had happened since we were parted; but Calla
was urgent that we should get to sea at once, and run down to some
islands where he said “missionary men” lived. And as we had to keep a
good lookout for fear of being pursued, and then all of us were so
tired, we agreed to sleep in turns, and when we were all rested to
communicate our different adventures.

When we were all rested and awake, the island where we had been
prisoners had almost faded out of view, and we were safe from pursuit,
and running before a steady trade wind.

“Now, mates,” said Tom, “I think we have all to thank Calla for saving
us, as without him we could have done nothing, and I vote he tells us
first how he came to help us.”

Calla very shortly told us that we had saved his life, and that he
thought it therefore belonged to us; and when his father came to where
he was kept prisoner, and provided him with means of escaping, lest he
should be killed, he first of all went to Bristol Bob’s island, which,
after the explosion we had heard (which was indeed the magazine, and
which had killed four men), had been _tabu_, where he found Tom and
Bos’n, and told them to get the boat ready, while he went himself and
got Bill and me out of our prison.

When his story was told, Tom insisted on hearing what had happened to
Bill and myself; and having been satisfied, he narrated his own
adventures.

“You see, mates, I was away in the magazine when you was carried off,
and knowing as I could do nothing, I kept low for a bit, and hid behind
some bushes, so as to keep a lookout on what happened. After some time I
saw some fellows, who had been hunting all over the island, and several
times came nigh on finding me, had made out the whereabouts of the
magazine, and got some torches to go down into it, and almost directly I
heard the place blow up.

“Their mates seemed to be pretty well frightened, and didn’t wait many
minutes nor look for their chums, but bolted to their canoes, and
paddled away to the big island for dear life.

“After a bit two big canoes came and paddled round with drums, and a man
in one of them shouted out something, and among what he said I could
make out ‘tabu, tabu,’ being repeated several times, and then they went
away again.

“When night came, I set to work to get the boat ready if possible; and
presently Bos’n, who had been hiding, came to me and helped. Calla came
after a while, and told us he would fetch you; and that’s the end of it,
till you came along of him, and we started.”

Our adventures were now almost over, for the next day we fell in with
the missionary schooner _Dayspring_, and the missionaries took care of
us, and took us to their headquarters.

When we came to overhaul the things we had brought away with us in
Bristol Bob’s boat, we found that the money and pearls were worth over
four thousand pounds, which we divided into four lots, one for each of
us, and one for Calla.

Calla said he would now become a “missionary man;” and he, after careful
instruction, became a Christian, and lived for many years happy and
respected.

Tom Arbor also became a “missionary man,” shipping in the _Dayspring_,
as did the faithful Bos’n, and had risen to be her mate when he met with
his death at the hands of savages, to whom he was trying to take the
message of peace, and added his name to the list of those martyrs who
have sacrificed their lives in the cause of Christianity in the Pacific.

Bill and I, by the advice of the missionaries, went home, and were bound
apprentices on board a fine Indiaman, and we both made rapid progress.
We always sailed together till Bill’s death. He lost his life in
attempting to save a shipwrecked crew.

Of the _Golden Fleece_ and her crew we never heard, and her fate is one
of the mysteries of the sea.

For myself, I have been fortunate and prosperous; and now, after having
for some years commanded my own ship, I have settled down to pass the
evening of my days in peace and quietness, full of thankfulness for the
mercies which have been vouchsafed to me.

                                THE END.


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        _An old sailor’s account of his own adventures, during
        times of peace and of war, in many parts of the world;
        privateering, whale-fishing, etc._

    The South Sea Whaler. A Story of the Loss of the _Champion_,
    and the Adventures of her Crew. With upwards of Thirty
    Engravings.

        _A tale of mutiny and shipwreck in the South Seas, the
        captain having his son and daughter on board with him._

    A Voyage Round the World. With Forty-two Engravings.

        _A young sailor’s account of his own adventures by sea
        and land, the scenes being laid chiefly in South
        America, the South Sea Islands, and Japan._

    The Young Rajah. A Story of Indian Life and Adventure. With
    upwards of Forty Full-page Engravings.

        _A story of the Indian Mutiny; the hero a young Indian
        prince, who had received an English education and become
        a Christian._

                 *        *        *        *        *

    On the Banks of the Amazon; or, A Boy’s Journal of his
    Adventures in the Tropical Wilds of South America. Profusely
    Illustrated.

        _In the course of the narrative some of the numberless
        animals, as well as a few of the most interesting of the
        vegetable productions, of the Amazonian Valley are
        described._

    In the Wilds of Florida. With Thirty-seven Engravings.

        _A tale of warfare and hunting._

    My First Voyage to Southern Seas. With Fifty-two Engravings.

        _A young sailor’s story, describing Cape Colony, Ceylon,
        Aden, etc._

    Saved from the Sea; or, The Loss of the _Viper_, and the
    Adventures of her Crew in the Great Sahara. With Thirty
    Full-page Engravings.

        _A young sailor’s account of his adventures, along with
        three shipwrecked comrades._

    Twice Lost. With Thirty-six Engravings.

        _A young sailor’s story of shipwreck, and perilous
        adventures in the wilds of Australia; which is the more
        interesting from the fact that he was accompanied by his
        father, mother, and sister._

    The Wanderers; or, Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and up
    the Orinoco. With Thirty Full-page Engravings.

    The Young Llanero. A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela.
    With Forty-four Engravings.

        _A thrilling and fascinating narrative of adventures in
        South America during the struggle for independence
        between the State of Colombia and the Spaniards._

    The above seven Volumes are done in a new uniform binding, with
    coloured Frontispiece and Vignette by W. S. STACEY. Cloth extra.
    Price 3s. 6d. each.

                 *        *        *        *        *

                  ENTIRELY NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION OF
                   R. M. Ballantyne’s Books for Boys.
_Post 8vo, cloth extra. Each with finely coloured Frontispiece and Title
                       Page. Price 2s. 6d. each._

    Mr. J. M. BARRIE says of “The Coral Island”:—“_For the
    authorship of that book I would joyously swop all mine. If there
    is a parent who has not given it to his son (or does not do so
    within eight days from now), he should at the least be turned
    out of his club. Many men, no doubt, become parents in order to
    give ‘The Coral Island’ to their son. Jack, Ralph, and Peterkin,
    I salute you, and hope you are all a fond memory recalls. Not
    since my schooldays have I met you, but I know what was in the
    pockets of the three of you the day you landed on that island
    better than I know the contents of my own to-day, and your
    wondrous cave is more to me than the Strand._”

    The Coral Island. A Tale of the Pacific.

        “_No boy could be expected to respect another boy who
        had not read Ballantyne’s bewitching book ‘The Coral
        Island.’_”—GAVIN OGILVY, in THE BRITISH WEEKLY.

    The Young Fur-Traders; or, Snowflakes and Sunbeams from the
    Far North.

    The World of Ice. Adventures in the Polar Regions.

    The Gorilla Hunters. A Tale of the Wilds of Africa.

        _A sequel to “The Coral Island,” and of as entrancing
        interest._

    Martin Rattler. A Boy’s Adventures in the Forests of Brazil.

        _“One of the best of this delightful and popular
        author’s books.”_—SCOTSMAN.

    Ungava. A Tale of Esquimau Land.

        “_Any one who wants boys to believe that there is a
        better writer of boys’ books than Mr. R. M. Ballantyne
        must shout very loud. ‘Ungava’ takes us to Esquimau
        land, and illustrates the phases of the fur-trader’s
        life in the wild regions which surround Hudson
        Bay._”—SHEFFIELD TELEGRAPH.

    The Dog Crusoe and His Master. A Story of Adventure on the
    Western Prairies.

        “_All the tales bear the stamp of the master hand. Here
        we rove amid the wilds of the west, hunt the buffalo and
        the grizzly bear, are chased and captured by Indians,
        and make a clever escape._”—PERTHSHIRE COURIER.

    Hudson Bay; or, Everyday Life in the Wilds of North America,
    during a Six Years’ Residence in the Territories of the Hon.
    Hudson Bay Company. With Memoir of the Author and Portrait. Also
    Twenty-nine Illustrations drawn by BAYARD and other Artists,
    from Sketches by the Author.

        “_The death of Mr. R. M. Ballantyne is the close of a
        long and busy and distinguished literary career. The
        news will have been received with regret by the many
        readers whom Mr. Ballantyne’s books have stirred and
        stimulated and charmed. They were written avowedly for
        boys, but they have been caught up eagerly by readers of
        every age, old and young alike, and when once taken in
        hand have seldom been laid down again until the last
        page had been reached._”—The Times.

                 *        *        *        *        *

               The Boys’ Library of Travel and Adventure.

    An Emperor’s Doom; or, The Patriots of Mexico. By
    Herbert Hayens, author of “Clevely Sahib,” “Under
    the Lone Star,” etc. Crown 8vo, bevelled boards, cloth extra.
    With Eight Illustrations by A. J. B. SALMON. Price 5s.

    Kilgorman. A Story of Ireland in 1798. By TALBOT BAINES REED,
    author of “The Fifth Form at St. Dominic’s,” “The Willoughby
    Captains,” “Follow My Leader,” etc. Illustrated by John
    Williamson. With Portrait, and an “In Memoriam” Sketch of
    the Author by JOHN SIME. Crown 8vo, cloth extra. Price 5s.

        “_The book is full of interest from beginning to end,
        and written with a singular charm and grace of
        style._”—LEEDS MERCURY.

    Under the Lone Star. By HERBERT HAYENS. With Eight
    Illustrations by W. S. STACEY. Crown 8vo, bevelled boards, cloth
    extra, gilt top. Price 5s.

        “_Mr. Hayens for the plot of his ‘Under the Lone Star,’
        a story of Revolution in Nicaragua, turns to a
        fascinating page of history that has been rather
        neglected—the exploits of Colonel Walker, the
        filibuster, in the Central American Republics. The
        narrative is profoundly novel and interesting, and may
        be cordially recommended._”—Manchester
        Guardian.

    Clevely Sahib: A Tale of the Khyber Pass. By HERBERT HAYENS,
    author of “Under the Lone Star,” etc. With Eight Illustrations
    by J. WILLIAMSON. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt top. Price 5s.

        “_This is a capital story._”—STANDARD.

        “_A lovely tale set in the picturesque environment of
        India and Afghanistan._”—Black and White.

        “_Full of excitement and romance, which will be read
        with breathless eagerness.... Written with a most
        scrupulous adherence to the historical
        narrative_”—Christian World.

    Every Inch a Sailor. By GORDON STABLES, M.D., R.N., author of
    “As We Sweep through the Deep,” “How Jack Mackenzie Won his
    Epaulettes,” etc. Cloth extra, gilt top. Price 5s.

        “_Between the reader, ourselves, and the binnacle, there
        isn’t a living writer—unless it be Clark Russell, and
        he appeals more to the adult—who can hold a candle, or
        shall we say a starboard light, to Gordon Stables as a
        narrator of sea stories for boys. This one is worthy of
        the high traditions of the author._”—LITERARY WORLD.

    In the Wilds of the West Coast. By J. MACDONALD OXLEY, author
    of “Up Among the Ice-Floes,” “Diamond Rock,” etc. Illustrated by
    W. THOMAS SMITH. Crown 8vo, cloth extra. Price 5s.

    Early English Voyagers; or, The Adventures and Discoveries of
    Drake, Cavendish, and Dampier. Numerous Illustrations. Crown
    8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges. Price 5s.

        “_A wonderful story of English courage, endurance, and
        love of adventure. Not a few of the daring exploits
        associated with these historic names have an air of
        romance and strangeness which appeals strongly to the
        imagination._”—Leeds Mercury.

    In Savage Africa; or, The Adventures of Frank Baldwin from the
    Gold Coast to Zanzibar. By VERNEY LOVETT CAMERON, C.B., D.C.L.,
    Commander Royal Navy; author of “Jack Hooper,” “Across Africa,”
    etc. With Thirty-two Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt
    edges. Price 5s.

        “_The author is the first European who ever crossed the
        breadth of the African continent in its central
        latitudes, and he is therefore quite at home in
        describing native manners, warfare, and superstitions.
        The adventures of the tale have the impress of vivid
        truth and actual reality._”—DUNDEE ADVERTISER.

    Jack Hooper. His Adventures at Sea and in South Africa. By
    VERNEY LOVETT CAMERON, C.B., D.C.L., Commander Royal Navy;
    author of “Across Africa,” etc. With Twenty-three Full-page
    Illustrations, Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges. Price 5s.

        “_Our author has the immense advantage over many writers
        that he describes what he has seen, and does not merely
        draw on his imagination and on books. He writes, too, in
        a brisk, manly style, and weaves what he has to say
        about the once dark continent into a very good story, of
        which the hero is Jack Hooper._”—SCOTSMAN.

    With Pack and Rifle in the Far South-West. Adventures in New
    Mexico, Arizona, and Central America. By ACHILLES DAUNT, author
    of “Frank Redcliffe,” “The Three Trappers,” etc. With Thirty
    Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges. Price 5s.

        “_There is thrilling narrative in the book, but also a
        good deal of solid matter. No little profit will remain
        to the reader after the pleasure of
        perusal._”—SCOTSMAN.

        “_The sensational incidents carry the reader along at a
        fine pace._”—Glasgow Herald.

        This series can also be had in uniform binding, cloth
        extra, plain edges, 4s. per vol.

                 *        *        *        *        *

              The “Forest and Fire” Series of Boys’ Books.

In attractive Binding, and fully Illustrated. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price
                                2s. 6d.

    Through Forest and Fire. By EDWARD S. ELLIS.

        “_A story of life in a lonely settlement in the United
        States, with many adventures in hunting, and from bears
        and forest fires._”—STANDARD.

    On the Trail of the Moose. By EDWARD S. ELLIS.

        “_A stirring story of adventure in the wilds of North
        America. The author breaks new ground, and his bright,
        racy English adds much to the charm of what is certainly
        one of the best gift books of the season._”—BRITISH
        WEEKLY.

    Across Texas. By EDWARD S. ELLIS.

        “_There is a healthy high-toned character about Mr.
        Ellis’s stories that render them peculiarly suitable for
        boys._”—DUNDEE ADVERTISER.

    The Cabin in the Clearing. A Tale of the Far West. By
    Edward S. Ellis.

                 *        *        *        *        *

                   Tales of Adventure and Enterprise.

              _Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. 6d. each._

    The Vanished Yacht. By E. HARCOURT BURBAGE.

        “_Does not disappoint the expectation held out by the
        title, for it is full of interest and adventure._”—PALL
        MALL GAZETTE.

    Crag, Glacier, and Avalanche. Narratives of Daring and
    Disaster. By ACHILLES DAUNT, Author of “With Pack and Rifle in
    the Far South-west,” etc. With Illustrations.

    The Drifting Island; or, The Slave-Hunters of the Congo. By
    Walter Wentworth, Author of “Kibboo Ganey,” etc.

    The Flamingo Feather. By KIRK MUNROE. With Twenty
    Illustrations.

    Hans Brinker; or, The Silver Skates. A Story of Life in
    Holland. By MARY MAPES DODGE. With Illustrations.

        _An interesting and instructive tale of life in Holland;
        sure to prove acceptable to boys._

    Kibboo Ganey; or, The Lost Chief of the Copper Mountain. A
    Tale of Travel and Adventure in the Heart of Africa. By
    Walter Wentworth.

        _A well-told tale of adventure undergone in the course
        of a journey to the neighbourhood of Lake Tchad. To boys
        it cannot fail to prove fascinating._

    Our Sea-Coast Heroes; or, Tales of Wreck and of Rescue by the
    Lifeboat and Rocket. By ACHILLES DAUNT, Author of “Frank
    Redcliffe,” “With Pack and Rifle in the Far South-west,” etc.
    With numerous Illustrations.

        “_The narratives of wreck and rescue are admirably
        penned, and the illustrations throughout are
        effective._”—GLASGOW HERALD.

    Robinson Crusoe. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of
    Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Written by Himself.
    Illustrated.

    Sandford and Merton. A Book for the Young. By THOMAS DAY.
    Illustrated.

    The Swiss Family Robinson; or, Adventures of a Father and his
    Four Sons on a Desolate Island. Illustrated.

                 *        *        *        *        *

                         The Boys’ Own Library.

                _Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. each._

    Soldiers of the Queen; or, Jack Fenleigh’s Luck. A Story of
    the Dash to Khartoum. By HAROLD AVERY, Author of “Frank’s First
    Term,” etc., etc.

        “_Rehearses in a thrilling manner the stirring story of
        the Egyptian War and the advance to Khartoum._”—DUNDEE
        ADVERTISER.

    Vandrad the Viking; or, The Feud and the Spell. A Tale of the
    Norsemen. By J. STORER CLOUSTON. With Six Illustrations by
    HUBERT PATON.

        _How the valiant Vandrad comes under the “spell” of a
        certain beautiful “witch,” and how the glamour causes
        him to forego his revengeful purpose, is told by Mr.
        Storer Clouston in language so full of power and poetic
        feeling that once read the story will not soon be
        forgotten._

    Breaking the Record. The Story of Three Arctic Expeditions. By
    M. DOUGLAS, Author of “Across Greenland’s Ice-Fields.”

        “_Just the kind of book that will stir a boy’s heart to
        its uttermost depths, and make him give up his most
        cherished dreams of being a great Indian fighter in
        favour of an Arctic explorer._”—NORTH BRITISH DAILY
        MAIL.

    Across Greenland’s Ice-Fields. The Adventures of Nansen and
    Peary on the Great Ice-Cap. By M. DOUGLAS, Author of “For Duty’s
    Sake,” etc.

        _Sir Clements R. Markham, President of the Royal
        Geographical Society, says: “Miss Douglas conducts her
        readers over those trackless wastes of snow and ice in
        the footsteps of Nordenskiöld, of Nansen, and of Peary;
        and certainly those who begin the journey with her will,
        in continuing to the end, derive no small amount of
        pleasure and instruction.”_

    As We Sweep Through the Deep. A Story of the Stirring Times of
    Old. By GORDON STABLES, M.D., R.N. With Illustrations.

        _A story for boys, giving glimpses of naval life during
        the times of Napoleon._

    The Battle of the Rafts. And Other Stories of Boyhood in
    Norway. By H. H. BOYESEN.

        “_The stories are so different from the ordinary run of
        boys’ tales, and yet so exciting, that they cannot fail
        to be appreciated._”—DUNDEE ADVERTISER.

    After Years. A Story of Trials and Triumphs. By J. W. BRADLEY.
    Author of “Culm Rock.” With Illustrations.

    Among the Turks. By VERNEY LOVETT CAMERON, C.B., D.C.L.,
    Commander Royal Navy, Author of “Jack Hooper,” etc. With
    Illustrations.

        “_‘Among the Turks’ is racy with adventure and spirited
        descriptions of Eastern life and character. Boys will
        read the book with great delight._”—SCOTSMAN.

    Archie Digby; or, An Eton Boy’s Holidays. By G. E. WYATT,
    Author of “Harry Bertram and his Eighth Birthday.”

        _An interesting tale for boys. Archie, a thoughtless
        young Etonian, learns during a Christmas holiday, by
        humbling experience, lessons of value for all after
        life._

                 *        *        *        *        *

                       Our Boys’ Select Library.

              STORIES OF ADVENTURE, TRAVEL, AND DISCOVERY.

              _Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. 6d. each._

    The Forest, the Jungle, and the Prairie; or, Tales of
    Adventure and Enterprise in Pursuit of Wild Animals. With
    numerous Engravings.

    Scenes with the Hunter and the Trapper. Stories of Adventures
    with Wild Animals. With Engravings.

    Beyond the Himalayas. By JOHN GEDDIE, F.R.G.S., Author of “The
    Lake Regions of Central Africa,” etc. With Nine Engravings.

        “_A tale of adventure and travel over regions on the
        borders of China and Thibet. The author has taken great
        pains to make his descriptions of the scenery, natural
        history, and botany, and of the manners and habits of
        the frontier people accurate and instructive. There are
        plenty of exciting adventures and encounters with wild
        beasts and no less wild men._”—STANDARD.

    The Castaways. A Story of Adventure in the Wilds of Borneo. By
    Captain MAYNE REID.

    The Meadows Family; or, Fireside Stories of Adventure and
    Enterprise. By M. A. PAULL, Author of “Tim’s Troubles,” etc.
    With Illustrations.

    The Story of the Niger. A Record of Travel and Adventure from
    the Days of Mungo Park to the Present Time. By ROBERT
    RICHARDSON. Author of “Adventurous Boat Voyages,” “Ralph’s Year
    in Russia,” etc. With Thirty-one Illustrations.

                 *        *        *        *        *

                         The Norseland Library.

              _Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. 6d. each._

    The Hermit Princes. A Tale of Adventure in Japan. By
    Eleanor Stredder, Author of “Doing and Daring,”
    etc.

        “_Conspicuous for novelty of subject and treatment. It
        is a Japanese story perfectly conceived and realized.
        The landscape-painting throughout is terse and full of
        interest._”—MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.

    Norseland Tales. By H. H. BOYESEN, Author of “The Battle of
    the Rafts, and Other Stories of Boyhood in Norway.” With Seven
    Illustrations.

        “_They are tales of modern life, not of the Vikings, but
        of and about the sea, and of Norwegian boys who crossed
        the Atlantic. All are well written and
        interesting._”—Glasgow Herald.

    Leaves from a Middy’s Log. By ARTHUR LEE KNIGHT, Author of
    “Adventures of a Midshipmite,” “The Rajah of Monkey Island,”
    etc. Illustrated by A. PEARCE.

        “_A decidedly fresh and stirring story. There is plenty
        of incident and plenty of spirit in the story; the
        dialogue is amusing and natural, and the descriptions
        are vigorous and vivid._”—SPECTATOR.

    Sons of the Vikings. An Orkney Story. By JOHN GUNN, M.A.,
    D.Sc. With Illustrations by JOHN WILLIAMSON.

    Sons of Freedom; or, The Fugitives from Siberia. By FRED.
    WHISHAW. Author of “Harold the Norseman,” “A Lost Army,” “Boris
    the Bear-Hunter,” etc. With numerous Illustrations.

                 *        *        *        *        *

                       Our Boys’ Select Library.

              _Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. 6d. each._

                   THREE BOOKS BY W. H. G. KINGSTON.

    Afar in the Forest. With Forty-one Full-page Engravings.

    _A tale of settler life in North America, full of stirring
    adventure._

    In the Rocky Mountains. A Tale of Adventure. With Forty-one
    Engravings.

    _A narrative specially adapted to the taste and delectation of
    youth, with numerous incidents of travel and amusing stories,
    told in a fresh and invigorating style._

    In New Granada; or, Heroes and Patriots. With Thirty-six
    Full-page Engravings.

    “_This book will delight boys of all ages. The subject is
    unusually interesting, and opens a wide field for romantic
    adventure._”—PALL MALL GAZETTE.

                 *        *        *        *        *

              STORIES OF ADVENTURE, TRAVEL, AND DISCOVERY.

    Adventurous Boat Voyages. By ROBERT RICHARDSON, Author of
    “Ralph’s Year in Russia,” etc. With Fifteen Illustrations.

    Frank Redcliffe. A Story of Travel and Adventure in the
    Forests of Venezuela. By ACHILLES DAUNT, Author of “The Three
    Trappers.” With numerous Illustrations.

    In the Land of the Moose. Adventures in the Forests of the
    Athabasca. By ACHILLES DAUNT, Author of “The Three Trappers.”
    With Illustrations.

    In the Bush and on the Trail. Adventures in the Forests of
    North America. By M. BENEDICT REVOIL. With Seventy
    Illustrations.

    The Island Home; or, The Young Castaways. A Story of Adventure
    in the Southern Seas. With Illustrations.

    The Lake Regions of Central Africa. A Record of Modern
    Discovery. By JOHN GEDDIE, F.R.G.S. With Thirty-two
    Illustrations.

        “_Here we have excellent writing, full of accurate
        geographical information, and fascinating in style;
        first class illustration and plenty of it._”—SWORD AND
        TROWEL.

    Lost in the Backwoods. A Tale of the Canadian Forest. By Mrs.
    TRAILL, Author of “In the Forest,” etc. With 32 Engravings.

    The Three Trappers. By ACHILLES DAUNT, Author of “In the Land
    of the Moose, the Bear, and the Beaver.” With Eleven Engravings.

        “_It is one of those books which have been favourites
        with healthy-minded lads since books became common. We
        do not remember to have seen one that sustained more of
        vigour and liveliness in its narrative than
        this._”—SCOTSMAN.

    Wrecked on a Reef; or, Twenty Months in the Auckland Isles. A
    True Story of Shipwreck, Adventure, and Suffering. With Forty
    Illustrations.

    Ralph’s Year in Russia. A Story of Travel and Adventure in
    Eastern Europe. By ROBERT RICHARDSON, Author of “Almost a Hero,”
    etc. With Eight Engravings.

        “_A capital story of travel and adventure. Mr.
        Richardson has written with great force and vivacity. He
        has produced a story healthy in all
        respects._”—SCOTSMAN.

                 *        *        *        *        *

                Choice Illustrated Books for the Young.

                         _Price 3s. 6d. each._

    The Stories of the Trees. Talks with the Children. By Mrs.
    W. H. Dyson, Author of “Children’s Flowers,”
    “Apples and Oranges,” etc. With Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth
    extra, gilt edges.

        _An extremely well written and interesting book. The
        descriptions of all the more familiar trees of the
        forest are written with brevity, simplicity, and
        spirit._

        “_Well suited, by its pleasant, chatty style, to
        interest young people._”—Saturday Review.

    Natural History for Young Folks. By Mrs. C. C. CAMPBELL. With
    Fifty-six Illustrations by GIACOMELLI. In elegant binding. Post
    8vo, cloth extra, gold and colours.

        “_Evidently the result of years of research on the part
        of the author, Mrs. C. C. Campbell. Her object has been
        to simplify the more scientific side of the subject, and
        ‘to explain how the different orders of animals, from
        man, the highest, down to the duck-billed platypus,
        resemble one another.’ The book is thoroughly
        entertaining._”—Saturday Review.

    Pets and Playfellows; or, Stories about Cats and Dogs. By Mrs.
    SURR. With Twenty-four Illustrations. Small 4to, cloth extra.

        _A rich store of interest and amusement for young
        people, who will find their knowledge and love of
        animals increased by its perusal._

    Wonderland; or, Curiosities of Nature and Art. By WOOD SMITH.
    Author of “Oakville Manor,” “Prince Rolo,” etc. With numerous
    Illustrations. In illustrated fancy boards, cloth back.

        _Describes in a simple and popular style many of the
        wonders of nature, and also some of the great
        achievements of art._

    The World at Home. Pictures and Scenes from Far-off Lands. By
    M. and E. KIRBY. With One Hundred Engravings. Small 4to. In
    illustrated fancy boards, cloth back.

        _A book for the young, containing, in a number of short
        conversational sections, a great variety of geographical
        information, facts of natural history, and personal
        adventure; intended to bring the world, so full of
        wonders, to our own firesides._

    The Sea and its Wonders. By M. and E. KIRBY. With 174
    Illustrations. Small 4to. In illustrated fancy boards, cloth
    back.

        _A book for the young, not strictly scientific, but
        giving in a conversational style much varied
        information, with all sorts of illustrative engravings._

    Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. With Sixty Illustrations by
    David Scott, R.S.A., and W. B. SCOTT; and
    Introduction descriptive of the plates by the Rev. A. L.
    SIMPSON, D.D., Derby. _New and Cheaper Edition._ Large crown
    8vo.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    Royal Portrait Gallery. With numerous Illustrations. Small
    4to, cl. ex.

        _In this volume our kings and queens are described with
        pen and pencil in a way that is sure to delight and
        instruct young readers._

    Pictures and Stories from English History. With numerous
    Illustrations. Small 4to, cloth extra.

        _The stories are told in a lively and attractive style,
        and cannot fail to create in the young a liking for the
        study of history._

                 *        *        *        *        *

                   Charming Gift Books for the Young.

    Wonderland; or, Curiosities of Nature and Art. By WOOD SMITH,
    author of “Oakville Manor,” “Prince Rolo,” etc. With numerous
    Illustrations. Small 4to, cloth extra, gilt edges, 5s.; fancy
    boards, cloth back, 3s. 6d.

        “_A capitally illustrated volume, with the most
        miscellaneous contents. Forest trees, the Great Wall of
        China, strange varieties of boats, foreign costumes,
        pearl diving, and many other ‘wonders’ are briefly
        described._”—MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.

    The Sea and Its Wonders. By MARY and ELIZABETH KIRBY. With One
    Hundred and Seventy-four Illustrations. Small 4to, cloth extra,
    gilt edges, 5s.; fancy boards, cloth back, 3s. 6d.

        _A book for the young, not strictly scientific, but
        giving in a conversational style much varied information
        regarding the sea, its plants and living inhabitants,
        with all sorts of illustrative engravings._

    The World at Home. Pictures and Scenes from Far-off Lands. By
    M. and E. KIRBY. With One Hundred Engravings. Small 4to, cloth
    extra, gilt edges, 5s.; fancy boards, cloth back, 3s. 6d.

        _A book for the young, containing, in a number of short
        conversational sections, a great variety of geographical
        information, facts of natural history, and personal
        adventure; intended to bring the world, so full of
        wonders, to our own firesides. The whole is profusely
        illustrated._

    The Children’s Tour; or, Everyday Sights in a Sunny Land. By
    M. A. PAULL, author of “Tim’s Troubles,” “The Meadows Family.”
    With numerous Illustrations. Small 4to, cloth extra, gilt edges.
    Price 5s.

    Bible Stories Simply Told. By M. E. CLEMENTS, author of “The
    Story of the Beacon Fire,” etc. With numerous Illustrations.
    Small 4to, cloth extra, gilt edges, 5s.; plain edges, 3s. 6d.

    Pets and Playfellows; or, Stories about Cats and Dogs. By Mrs.
    SURR. With Twenty-four Illustrations. Small 4to, cloth extra.
    Price 3s. 6d.

        _A rich store of interest and amusement for young
        people, who will find their knowledge and love of
        animals increased by its perusal._

    Royal Portrait Gallery. With numerous Illustrations. Small
    4to, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d.

        _In this volume our kings and queens are described with
        pen and pencil in a way that is sure to delight and
        instruct young readers._

    Pictures and Stories from English History. With numerous
    Illustrations. Small 4to, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d.

        _The stories are told in a lively and attractive style,
        and cannot fail to create in the young a liking for the
        study of history._

                 *        *        *        *        *

          T. NELSON AND SONS, London, Edinburgh, and New York.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious
typesetting and punctuation errors have been corrected without note.


[End of _Three Sailor Boys OR Adrift in the Pacific_]