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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
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