a seaman named Ray; all the
rest had been slain and thrown overboard.

Apparently satisfied with the dreadful slaughter they had committed, the
natives now began plundering the ship, and Captain Shelley, who seems
to have been spared merely for the same reason that Upaparu was not
killed--because he was a chief, and therefore sacred--had to sit by and
watch them.

After stripping the vessel of everything movable, and even taking all
her canvas except the spanker and topsails, the natives went ashore, and
their leader, addressing Upaparu, told him that the ship was at liberty
to go away.

With the aid of the seaman Ray and the gallant chieftain, Captain
Shelley managed to get under weigh, and sailed for Tahiti, which he
reached safely. Here he stayed for some months, and then, having made
a new suit of sails from native mats, he returned to Port Jackson to
relate the story of his fateful voyage.

THE PERUVIAN SLAVERS

About north-west from turbulent and distracted Samoa lie a group of
eight low-lying coral atolls, called the Ellice Islands. Fifty years
ago, when the white cotton canvas of the ships of the American whaling
fleet dotted the blue of the Pacific from the west coast of South
America to the bleak and snow-clad shores of the Siberian coast, these
lonely islands were perhaps better known than they are now, for
then, when the smoky flames of the whaleships' try works lit up the
night-darkened expanse of the ocean, and the crackling of the furnace
fires and the bubble of the boiling oil made the hardy whalemen's hearts
grow merry, many a white man, lured by the gentle nature and amiable
character of the Ellice Islanders, had built his house of thatch under
the shadow of the rustling palms, and dwelt there in peace and happiness
and overflowing plenty. Some of them were traders--men who bartered
their simple wares, such as red Turkey twill, axes, knives, beads,
tobacco, pipes, and muskets, for coconut oil and turtle shell. Others
were wild, good-for-nothing runaways from whaleships, who then were
generally known as "beach-combers"--that is, combing the beach for a
living--though that, indeed, was a misnomer, for in those days, except
one of these men was either a murderer or a tyrant, he did not "comb"
for his living, but simply lived a life of luxurious, sensuous ease
among the copper-coloured people with whom he dwelt. He had, indeed, to
be of a hard and base nature to incur the ill-will or hostility