s of Bougainville Island and New Ireland.
They literally swarmed on a small uninhabited island, covered with
bread-fruit and other trees, and used by the natives as a sort of
pleasure resort.

The two boats returned together, and leaving the second mate to buy more
pigs and turtle--for we had eighty-five "recruits" on board to feed, as
well as the ship's company of twenty-eight persons--the skipper and I
started off in my boat for the little island, accompanied by several
young Nisan "bucks" carrying old smooth-bore muskets, for they, too,
wanted to join in the sport I had given them some tins of powder, shot,
and a few hundred military caps. We landed on a beautiful white beach,
and telling our boat's crew to return to the village and help the second
mate, the skipper and I, with the Nisan natives, walked up the bank,
and in a few minutes the guns were at work. Never before had I seen
such thousands of pigeons in so small an area. It could hardly be called
sport, for the birds were so thick on the trees that when a native fired
at haphazard into the branches the heavy charge of shot would bring them
down by the dozen--the remainder would simply fly off to the next tree.
Owing to the dense foliage the skipper and I seldom got a shot at them
on the wing, and had to slaughter like the natives, consoling ourselves
with the fact that every bird would be eaten. Most of them were so fat
that it was impossible to pluck them without the skin coming away,
and from the boat-load we took on board the skip's cook obtained a
ten-gallon keg full of fat.

About noon we ceased, to have something to eat and drink, and chose for
our camp a fairly open spot, higher than the rest of the island, and
growing on which were some magnificent trees, bearing a fruit called
vi. It is in reality a wild mango, but instead of containing the smooth
oval-shaped seed of the mango family, it has a round, root-like and
spiky core. The fruit, however, is of a delicious flavour, and when
fully ripe melts in one's mouth. Whilst our native friends were grilling
some birds, and getting us some young coco-nuts to drink, the captain
and I, taking some short and heavy pieces of wood, began throwing them
at the ripe fruit overhead. Suddenly my companion tripped over something
and fell.

"Hallo, what is this?" he exclaimed, as he rose and looked at the cause
of his mishap.

It was the end of a bar of pig-iron ballast, protruding some inches
out of the soft soi