nger in his beak once more, and bit it with the
tenderness of his kind in their softer moments. Then he threw back his
head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his
voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message:

"Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of York!
Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads!

"In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King
Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in
the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing
the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great
Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by
stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island,
called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which
wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by
divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners,
whereof I am one, who in God's good providence swam safely through an
exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There
my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and
Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said
gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at
the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela. But I, myself, having
through God's grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the post
which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this bird, my
mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover."

Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked
his eyes wearily.

"What does he say?" the Frenchman began, eager to know the truth. But
Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of the bird's
discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning finger, and
then laid it on his lips in mute injunction. Methuselah threw back his
head at that and laughed aloud. "God save the king!" he cried again, in a
still feebler way, "and to hell with all papists!"

It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious
messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the
import of the words he was uttering. Methuselah laughed at their
earnestness, shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to
himself. Then he remembered afresh the poi