r to save their lives. The master's
assistant, who commanded the party, seeing that any attempt to rescue
the prisoners would be utterly hopeless, to save his own life was
compelled to follow his men.

Just as the last English seaman was picked up, the dhow's stern, already
a mass of flames, lifted, and she glided down, bow foremost, beneath the
surface; a few pieces of charred wood and bamboo marking the spot where
she had lately floated.

"Serve the fellows right," observed several of the men who were watching
the occurrence; "the hangman has been saved a job, and stout rope left
for a better purpose."

Murray and Adair, although acknowledging that the murderers, as they
deemed them, had met with a just fate, could not help regretting that
all means of obtaining information as to what had become of the
midshipmen and their companions had thus been lost.

"All I can now do," said Murray, "is to cruise over the ground the dhow
must have traversed after you left her, and look out for the canoe, in
case any of the party may have succeeded in getting into her. It is
possible that some of them may have done so, although in this long
interval they must have suffered fearfully for want of food."

As no time was to be lost, Murray returned on board, leaving Adair with
his party still on the island. The corvette, immediately weighing
anchor, stood away close--hauled to the eastward, that she might on
another tack fetch the spot where her search was to begin. Murray's
remarks had slightly raised Adair's hopes that one if not both of the
midshipmen might have been saved, had they been hove overboard alive;
but it was too probable that the Arabs would have knocked them on the
head first, and then thrown them into the water. He expressed his
thoughts to Green.

"I don't altogether give them up," answered Jos. "Midshipmen have a
wonderful way of keeping in existence, and by some means or other they
may have escaped, though I can't say how it may have happened."

Adair's anxiety prevented him from sitting quiet in his tent, and, in
spite of the hot sun, he continued walking about, now visiting the
look-out man, now seeing how the unfortunate slaves were getting on.
Pango and Bango were of great assistance in communicating with them and
dissipating their fears, though their captors had taken good care to
instil into their minds the belief that the Englishmen wished only to
catch them for the sake of salting them down for