nce or twice without speaking, all
of which must have been highly comforting and beneficial to the child,
the doctor went out.

Not long afterwards the people began to assemble round the palace, in
front of which a wondrous throne had been erected. Down in a dell
behind a cliff some fifty men had assembled secretly with the crown on a
cushion in their midst. They were headed by Dr Marsh, who had been
unanimously elected to place the crown on Pauline's head. In the palace
Pauline was being prepared by Mrs Lynch and Mrs Nobbs for the
ceremony.

On the top of a mound close to the palace a band of conspirators was
assembled. These conspirators were screened from view by some thick
bushes. Otto Rigonda was their ringleader, Teddy Malone and little
Buxley formed the rest of the band. Otto had found a dead tree. Its
trunk had been hollowed by decay. He and his fellow-conspirators had
sawn it off near to the ground, and close to the root they had drilled a
touch-hole. This huge piece of ordnance they had loaded with a heavy
charge of the ship's gunpowder. Otto now stood ready with a piece of
slow-match at the touch-hole, and another piece, lighted, in hand.

Suddenly, about the hour of noon, Abel Welsh the carpenter, and Nobbs
the blacksmith, issued from the palace with two long tin implements.
Secretly, for two weeks previously, had these devoted men retired every
night to the opposite extremity of Big Island, and frightened into fits
the birds and beasts of that region with the sounds they produced in
practising on those instruments. Applying the trumpets to their lips,
they sent forth a tremendous, though not uniform, blast.

The surrounding crowd, who expected something, but knew not what,
replied with a cheer not unmixed with laughter, for the two trumpets,
after the manner of asses, had to make some ineffectual preliminary
efforts before achieving a full-toned bray. An answering note from the
dell, however, repressed the laughter and awoke curiosity. Next moment
the doctor appeared carrying the crown, and followed by his fifty men,
armed with muskets, rifles, fowling-pieces, and revolvers. Their
appearance was so realistic and impressive that the people forgot to
cheer. At the same moment the palace door was thrown open, and Dominick
led the youthful queen to the foot of the throne.

Poor little Pauline looked so modest and pretty, and even timid, and
withal so angelically innocent in the simplicity of