s good."

"Swate cratures," murmured Rooney; "I hope we'll be introdooced to aich
other soon."

As it is desirable that the reader should have a little more extended
knowledge of the miscreants referred to, we will retrace our steps in
time a little, and change the scene.

On one of those sweltering mornings in which the eastern seas appear to
have a tendency to boil under the influence of the sun, three piratical
junks might have been seen approaching a small island which lay on the
sea as if on a mirror. They were propelled by oars. The largest of
these junks was under command of our red-jacketed acquaintance,
Pungarin. It was what is termed double-banked, and the oars were pulled
by "slaves," that is to say, the crews of trading vessels recently
captured.

Pungarin had more slaves than he knew what to do with on that occasion.
He had been unusually successful in his captures. All the white men
taken had at once been slaughtered, also all who attempted to give the
pirates trouble in any way, including those who chanced to be too weak,
ill, or old to work. In regard to the rest, each man was secured to his
place at the oar by means of a strip of cane, called rattan, fastened
round his neck, and a man was appointed to lash them when they showed
symptoms of flagging. This the unhappy wretches frequently did, for, as
on a former occasion to which we have referred, they were made to pull
continuously without food or water, and occasionally, after dropping
their oars through exhaustion, it took severe application of the lash,
and the discovery of some unusually sensitive spot of the body, to rouse
some of them again to the point of labour.

The junks were strange, uncouth vessels, of considerable size, capable,
each, of containing a very large crew. They might almost have been
styled "life-boats," as they had hollow bamboos wrought into their
structure in a manner which gave them great buoyancy, besides projecting
beyond the hulls and forming a sort of outside platform. On these
platforms the slaves who rowed were fastened. In each vessel there were
at least forty or fifty rowers.

Pungarin walked up and down his poop-deck as if in meditation, paying no
regard to what was going on around him until a feeble cry was heard from
one of the rowers,--a middle-aged and sickly man. The pirate captain
looked carelessly on, while the overseer flogged this man; but the lash
failed to arouse him, and the captain ordere