prepared to
receive their majesties whenever they chose to visit him. This done,
Willis and his companion seated themselves in the canoe, and rowed out
to the pinnace.

"God be thanked, you have returned in safety!" cried Fritz; "I never
was so uneasy in the whole course of my life."

"Well, brother, we have not been without our anxieties as well, and
had we not happened to have had a divinity amongst us, we might not
have come off scathless."

Jack then related their adventures, which gradually brought a smile to
the pale lips of Fritz.

"But the water?" inquired Fritz, after he had heard the story.

"Oh, water; they offered us something to drink on shore that will
prevent us being thirsty for a month to come, but we shall see to that
to-morrow."

Towards dark, some fireworks were discharged on board the pinnace, by
way of demonstrating that Willis's pipe was not the only fiery terror
the great Rono had at his command.

Early next morning a flotilla of canoes were observed rounding one of
the points that formed the bay. The one in advance was larger than the
others, and was evidently the trunk of a large tree hollowed out.
Jack's new friend, the Portuguese, hailed the pinnace, and announced
the King and Queen of Hawai, who thereupon scrambled into the pinnace.
His majesty King Toubowrai had probably felt it incumbent upon himself
to do honor to the illustrious Rono, for he wore an old uniform coat,
very likely the produce of a wreck, through the sleeves of which the
angular knobs of his copper-colored elbows projected. He did not seem
very much at his ease in this garment, which contrasted oddly with the
tight-fitting tattooed skin that served him for pantaloons.

His wife, Queen Tonico, princess-like was half stifled in a thick
blanket or mat of cocoa-nut fibre. Her ears were heavily laden with
teeth and ornaments of various kinds, made out of bone, mother of
pearl, and tortoise-shell. Her nails were two or three inches long;
and, to judge by the number of finger-joints that were wanting, she
was either troubled with delicate nerves, or was slightly
hypochondriac.

The royal pair were accompanied by a band of music: fortunately, this
remained in the regal barge. It consisted of a flute with four holes,
a nondescript instrument, seemingly made of stones; a drum made out of
the hollow trunk of a tree, covered at each end with skin, of what
kind it is needless to inquire. The sounds emitted by this orchestra