d off some of them by force.

"We will not let a living man touch our shore," said Ongoloo to Wapoota,
who chanced to be near his leader, when he marshalled his men.

"Oh! yes, we will, chief," replied the brown humorist. "We will let
some of them touch it, and then we will take them up carefully, and have
them baked. A long-pig supper will do us good. The rest of them we
will drive back to their big canoe."

By the term "long-pig" Wapoota referred to the resemblance that a naked
white man when prepared for roasting bears to an ordinary pig.

A grim smile lit up Ongoloo's swarthy visage as he replied--

"Yes, we will permit a few fat ones to land. The rest shall die, for
white men are thieves. They deceived us last time. They shall never
deceive us again."

As this remark might have been meant for a covert reference to his own
thievish tendencies, Wapoota restrained his somewhat ghastly humour,
while the chief continued his arrangements for repelling the invaders.

Meanwhile, these invaders were getting into the boat.

"What! you's not goin' widout me?" exclaimed Ebony, as one of the
sailors thrust him aside from the gangway.

"I fear we are," said Orlando, as he was about to descend the vessel's
side. "It was as much as I could do to get Waroonga to agree to let me
go with him."

"But dis yar nigger kin die in a good cause as well as you, massa," said
Ebony, in a tone of entreaty so earnest that the men standing near could
not help laughing.

"Now then, make haste," sang out the officer in charge of the boat.

Orlando descended, and the negro, turning away with a deeply injured
expression, walked majestically to the stern to watch the boat.

Waroonga had prepared himself for the enterprise by stripping off every
article of clothing save a linen cloth round his loins, and he carried
nothing whatever with him except a small copy of God's Word printed in
the language of the islanders. This, as the boat drew near to shore, he
fastened on his head, among the bushy curls of his crisp black hair, as
in a nest.

Orlando had clothed himself in a pair of patched old canvas trousers,
and a much worn unattractive cotton shirt.

"Stop now," said the missionary, when the boat was about five or six
hundred yards from the beach. "Are you ready?"

"Ready," said Orlando.

"Then come."

He dropped quietly over the side and swam towards the shore. Orlando,
following his example, was alongside of him in a fe