ter rage and disappointment, a puff of wind came
over from the westward, and the barque's sails filled. In ten minutes
she was slipping through the water so quickly that she was leaving them
astern fast, and in another hour she had swept round the south end of
the land, and they saw her no more.

Sad and dejected, he and his native friends returned to Tuuhora, and
drawing up their boats and canoes, went to their homes in silence.

CHAPTER III

TEN years had passed, and fortune had proved kind to Martin Flemming and
his family, who were now, with the exception of the eldest son, settled
on the island of Barotonga, one of the Cook's Group.

For some years after the abduction of the four unfortunate natives,
Flemming had tried every possible means of ascertaining their fate, and
at first thought that he would succeed, for within a few weeks after
the visit of the barque to Anaa, there came news of similar outrages
perpetrated by three vessels, through the Ellice, Line Islands and
Paumotu Group. One of these vessels was a barque, the others were brigs,
and all sailed under Peruvian colours, though many of the officers were
Englishmen.

In one instance they had descended upon the unsuspecting inhabitants of
the island of Nukulaelae in the Ellice Group, and carried off almost the
entire population, and at Easter Island--far to the eastward, over
three hundred unfortunate natives were seized under circumstances of the
grossest treachery and violence, and manacled together, taken away to
end their days as slaves in working the guano deposits on the Chincha
Islands, off the coast of South America.

Though not then a rich man, Flemming at his own expense made a long and
tedious voyage to the Ghinchas. By the time he arrived there nearly a
year had elapsed since the four men had been stolen, and he found that
both the British and French Governments had compelled the Peruvian
Government to restore all of the wretched survivors--there were but
few, alas!--to their homes. Over one hundred of the wretched beings had
perished of disease in the hot and stifling holds of the slavers; scores
of them, attempting to regain their liberty, had been shot down, and the
fearful toil in the guano pits of the Ghincha Islands carried off many
more.

At the Chincha Islands he was unable to gain any definite information
about the four men, but was told that the British Consul at Gallao might
be able to tell him what had become of them--