fancy to trouble the settlement; and if Bumpus is willing to try his
luck on shore, I promise him he'll find her a good mistress, and her
house pleasant quarters."

"So," exclaimed the stout seaman, stopping short in his rolling walk,
and gazing earnestly into his captain's face, "I'm to be sold to a
woman?"

"With your own consent entirely, Master Bumpus," said Gascoyne, with a
smile.

"Come, Jo," cried. Henry, gaily, "I see you like the prospect, and feel
assured that you and I shall be good friends. Give us your flipper, my
boy!"

John Bumpus allowed the youth to seize and shake a "flipper," which
would have done credit to a walrus, both in regard to shape and size.
After a short pause he said, "Whether you and me shall be good friends,
young man, depends entirely on the respect which you show to the family
of the Bumpuses--said family havin' comed over to Ireland with the
Conkerer in the year--, ah! I misremember the year, but that don't
matter, bein' a subject of no consarn wotiver, 'xcept to schoolboys
who'll get their licks if they can't tell, and sarve 'em right too. But
if you're willin' I'm agreeable, and there's an end o' the whole
affair."

So saying, John Bumpus suffered a bland smile to light up his ruddy
countenance, and resumed his march in the "wake," as he expressed it, of
his companions.

Half an hour later they arrived at Sandy Cove, a small native settlement
and mission station, and were soon seated at the hospitable board of
Widow Stuart.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MISSIONARY--SUSPICIONS, SURPRISES, AND SURMISES.

Sandy Cove was a small settlement, inhabited partly by native converts
to Christianity, and partly by a few European traders, who, having found
that the place was in the usual track of South-Sea whalers, and
frequently visited by that class of vessels as well as by other ships,
had established several stores or trading-houses, and had taken up their
permanent abode there.

The island was one of those the natives of which were early induced to
agree to the introduction of the gospel. At the time of which we write,
it was in that transition state which renders the work of the missionary
one of anxiety, toil, and extreme danger, as well as one of love.

But the Rev. Frederick Mason was a man eminently fitted to fill the post
which he had selected as his sphere of labor. Bold and manly in the
extreme, he was more like a soldier in outward aspect than a missionary.
Yet the gent