the marrow in everybody's
bones. It was caused by a huge pig, which, observing that the gate had
been left open, had entered the square, and gone up to snuff at one of
the nude babies, who, seated like a whitey-brown petrifaction, gazed
with a look of horror in the pig's placid face.

If ever a pig in this sublunary sphere regretted a foolish act, that
Pitcairn pig must have been steeped in repentance to the latest day of
its life. With one howl in unison, the entire field, _minus_ the
infants, ran at that pig like a human tornado. It was of no avail that
the pig made straight for the gate by which it had entered. That gate
had either removed or shut itself. In frantic haste, the unhappy
creature coursed round the square, followed by its pursuers, who soon
caught it by the tail, then by an ear, then by the nose and the other
ear, and a fore leg and two hind ones, and finally hurled it over the
fence, amid a torrent of shrieks which only a Pitcairn pig could utter
or a Pitcairn mind conceive. It fell with a bursting squeak, and
retired in grumpy silence to ruminate over the dire consequences of a
too earnest gaze in the face of a child.

"Well done, child'n!" cried John Adams. "Sarves him right. Come, now,
to grub, all of you."

Even though the Pitcairn children had been disobedient by nature, they
would have obeyed that order with alacrity. In a few brief minutes a
profound silence proclaimed, more clearly than could a trumpet-tongue,
that the inhabitants of the lonely island were at dinner.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

THE LAST MAN.

One morning John Adams, instead of going to work in his garden, as was
his wont, took down his musket from its accustomed pegs above the door,
and sallied forth into the woods behind the village. He had not gone
far when he heard a rustling of the leaves, and looking back, beheld the
graceful form of Sally bounding towards him.

"Are you going to shoot, father?" she said, on coming up.

The young people of the village had by this time got into the habit of
calling Adams "father," and regarded him as the head of the community;
not because of his age, for at this time he was only between thirty and
forty years, but because of his sedate, quiet character, and a certain
air of elderly wisdom which distinguished him. Even Edward Young, who
was about the same age, but more juvenile both in feeling and
appearance, felt the influence of his solid, unpretending temperament,
and l