Get ready the gig. Well,
upon my soul, there _is_ a rum start anyway."

"What does the message say?" the passenger inquired, with intense
surprise.

"Say? Well, there's what I make it out," the captain answered, handing
him the scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the letters. "I missed
the beginning, but the end's all right. Look alive there, boys, will you.
Bring out the Winchester. Take cutlasses, all hands. I'll go along myself
in her."

The passenger took the piece of paper on which he read, "and send a boat
to rescue us. Come well armed. Savages on guard. Thurstan, Ellis."

In less than three minutes the boat was lowered and manned, and the
captain, with the Winchester six-shooter by his side, seated grim in the
stern, took command of the tiller.

On the island it was the first day of Felix and Muriel's imprisonment in
the dusty precinct of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. All the morning through,
they had sat under the shade of a smaller banyan in the outer corner; for
Muriel could neither enter the noisome hut nor go near the great tree
with the skeletons on its branches; nor could she sit where the dead
savage's body, still festering in the sun, attracted the buzzing blue
flies by thousands, to drink up the blood that lay thick on the earth in
a pool around it. Hard by, the natives sat, keen as lynxes, in a great
circle just outside the white taboo-line, where, with serried spears,
they kept watch and ward over the persons of their doubtful gods or
victims. M. Peyron, alone preserving his equanimity under these adverse
circumstances, hummed low to himself in very dubious tones; even he
felt his French gayety had somewhat forsaken him; this revolution in
Boupari failed to excite his Parisian ardor.

About one o'clock in the day, however, looking casually seaward--what was
this that M. Peyron, to his great surprise, descried far away on the dim
southern horizon? A low black line, lying close to the water? No, no; not
a steamer!

Too prudent to excite the natives' attention unnecessarily, the
cautious Frenchman whispered, in the most commonplace voice on earth to
Felix: "Don't look at once; and when you do look, mind you don't exhibit
any agitation in your tone or manner. But what do you make that out to
be--that long black haze on the horizon to southward?"

Felix looked, disregarding the friendly injunction, at once. At the same
moment, Muriel turned her eyes quickly in the self-same direction.
Neither ma