In neither vessel was there the slightest
symptom of preparation; and to one who knew not the true state of
matters, the idea of war being about to break forth was the last that
would have occurred.

But this deceitful quiet was only the calm that precedes the storm. On
every hand men were busily engaged in making preparations to break that
Sabbath day in the most frightful manner, or were calmly, but
resolutely, awaiting attack. On board the ship-of-war, indeed, there was
little doing; for, her business being to fight, she was always in a
state of readiness for action. Her signal guns, fired the previous
night, had recalled Montague to tell him of the threatened attack by the
savages. A few brief orders were given, and they were prepared for
whatever might occur. In the village, too, the arrangements to repel
attack having been made, white men and native converts alike rested with
their arms placed in convenient proximity to their hands.

In a wild and densely-wooded part of the island far removed from those
portions which we have yet had occasion to describe, a band of
fiendish-looking men were making arrangements for one of those
unprovoked assaults which savages are so prone to make on those who
settle near them.

They were all of them in a state of almost complete nudity; but the
complicated tattooing on their dark skins gave them the appearance of
being more clothed than they really were. Their arms consisted chiefly
of enormous clubs of hard wood, spears, and bows; and, in order to
facilitate their escape should they chance to be grasped in a
hand-to-hand conflict, they had covered their bodies with oil, which
glistened in the sunshine as they moved about their village.

Conspicuous among these truly savage warriors was the form of Keona,
with his right arm bound up in a sort of sling. Pain and disappointed
revenge had rendered this man's face more than unusually diabolical as
he went about among his fellows, inciting them to revenge the insult and
injury done to them through his person by the whites. There was some
reluctance, however, on the part of a few of the chiefs to renew a war
that had been terminated, or rather been slumbering, only for a few
months.

Keona's influence, too, was not great among his kindred, and had it not
been that one or two influential chiefs sided with him, his own efforts
to relight the still smoking torch of war would have been unavailing.

As it was, the natives soon worke