nces you seem to
have had a fairly lively time out here."

"We have, I can assure you," said I; and then I proceeded to give
Cunningham a detailed account of all that had happened during the
absence of himself and the skipper. I had scarcely finished when the
cabin boy came up with the intimation that breakfast was ready in the
cabin, and we accordingly went below, seated ourselves, and fell to. We
did not dally long over the meal, for there was still plenty to be done
and thought about; but before returning to the deck I remarked to
Cunningham that I should like to look in and see how the skipper was
getting on, and we both entered the stateroom together. To my surprise
we found that the old chap was awake and seemingly feeling not very much
the worse for the hard knock on the head which he had received; indeed,
he wanted to turn out and dress and go on deck. But Cunningham, who had
assumed the role of surgeon, would not hear of such a thing--would not
even permit Brown to leave his bunk; so, as a compromise, I just had to
sit down and spin the whole yarn of our adventure over again to him.
The poor old fellow seemed very much cut up when he learned that we had
lost six men--all of them compatriots of his, too--and bitterly
reproached himself for having come to the island at all. Of course we
comforted him as well as we could by pointing out to him that the
happening was due not so much to want of precaution on his part as to
the exceeding guile of the natives; and then I led the conversation
round to the prisoners, and asked what he proposed to do with them.
Cunningham was for taking the law into our own hands and inflicting upon
them a salutary lesson by hanging one of them at the yardarm for each of
our people who had been murdered; but Brown would not hear of this, and
we were all three still discussing the matter when the cabin boy came
down with a message from Murdock to say that a large canoe had just been
launched from the beach and was heading for the schooner, and would I be
pleased to go on deck.

Of course I instantly obeyed the call, for my first idea was that
another attack was possibly impending; but when I got on deck I found
that the canoe, although a large one, was manned by only four natives,
who were approaching us very slowly, and apparently with a considerable
amount of trepidation, and that a large palm-leaf was conspicuously
displayed in the bows of the craft, the latter being, as I interp