ts, their despoilers flinging the garments into the
canoes that now crowded around.

No more plunder being obtainable, the fleet headed for land, with their
captives in anything but a cheerful frame of mind. The shore was lined
with women and children, who answered the shouts of their friends in
the boats by running back and forth, screeching and yelling and
dancing, as if unable to restrain themselves until the arrival of their
victims.

The sailors believed they would be speedily killed and eaten, the
latter horror might have been escaped had they known, what they
afterward learned, that the savages of those islands are not cannibals.

The poor fellows stepped from their boat upon the shore, where they
were immediately environed by the fierce men, women and children, half
naked, wild, boisterous, and seemingly impatient to rend them to
pieces. The prisoners could do nothing but meekly await the next step
in the tragedy.

It was during these trying moments that the sailors were astounded to
hear, amid the babel of voices, several words spoken in English.
Staring about them to learn the meaning of such a strange thing, they
saw a man attired as were the others, that is with only a piece of
cloth about his hips, whose complexion and features showed that he
belonged to the same race with themselves.

He advanced in a cheery, hearty way, and shaking hands with the new
arrivals, said:

"I think you did not expect to find me here."

"Indeed we did not," was the reply; "you appear to be an Englishman."

"So I am, and I am anxious to give you all the help I can, for your
situation is anything but a desirable one."

"There can be no doubt of that. But how is it that you are here? Were
you shipwrecked like ourselves?"

"No; I may say I was deserted. My name is Charles Irons, and I was
left at Poseat by a trading vessel four years ago."

"How came that?"

"I was to act as the agent of a company of traders on the Cocoanut
Islands. Well, the vessel left me, as I first told you, and that was
the last of it. They forgot all about me, or more likely, did not care
to keep their promise, for I have never seen anything of the vessel
since."

"What an outrage!"

"It was, and there couldn't have been a more wretched person than I was
for several months. I looked longingly out to sea for the ship that
never came, and chafed like a man who is bound hand and foot. But,"
added the Englishman with a smile, "there is