with the now freshening trade wind
filling their sails, set a course along the coast which before sunset
would bring them to Leasse, on the lee side of the island. But
presently, in response to a signal from the _Lucy May_, the whaler lay
to; a boat put off from the smaller ship, and Captain Ross came
alongside, clambered over the bulwarks and joined Cayse and the young
king of Port Lele, who were awaiting him on the poop, to discuss with
him the plan of surprise and slaughter of the offending people of
Leasse.

* * * * *

Nearly a week before the _Iroquois_ had run into Port Lele to refresh
before proceeding westward and northward to the Bonin Islands in
pursuance of her cruise. Charlik, the king, was delighted to see Cayse,
for in the days when his father was king the American captain had
conveyed a party of one hundred Strong's Islanders from Port Lele to
MacAskill's Island, landed them in his boats during the night, and stood
off and on till daylight, when they returned reeking from their work of
slaughter upon the sleeping people, and bringing with them some scores
of women and children as captives. For this service the king had given
Cayse half a ton of turtle-shell, and the services of ten young men as
seamen for as long a time as the _Iroquois_ cruised in the Pacific on
that voyage. When Charlik's father was dying, he called his head chiefs
around him, and gave the boy into their care with these words--"Here die
I upon my mat like a woman, long before my time, and to-morrow my spirit
will hear the mocking laughs of the men of Mout and Leasse, when they
say, 'Sikra is dead; Sikra was but an empty boaster.'"

Then his son spoke.

"Not many days shall they laugh. They shall be destroyed all, all, all
of them."

The king touched his son's hand.

"Those are good words. But be not too hasty. Wait till the American
comes again. He will help with his men and guns. But he is a greedy man.
Yet spare nothing; give him all the silver and gold money I have stored
by for his return, and all the turtle-shell that can be gathered
together. And let there be not even one little child left in Mout or
Leasse."

Charlik was a lad or seventeen when his savage old father died, and for
a year after his death he harried and distressed his people by his
exactions. All day long the men toiled at making coconut oil, and at
night time they watched along the beaches for the hawk-bill turtle; the
oil t