hould."

"Was it `Vive Napoleon!' that you heard?"

"Those are the very words!" cried Johnny; "they were spoken as plainly
as you speak them, but in a rougher voice."

"Did you see any thing--did you look towards the thicket!"

"I saw something stir, but could not tell what it was. The voice was
harsh and angry, and I was frightened, and ran away as fast as I could.
I thought perhaps it was a wild man--some one who had been shipwrecked
here many years ago, and lived alone in the woods until he had grown
wild or mad."

Johnny was so positive in this singular story, that for a moment we
hardly knew what to think of it. Eiulo too had heard the voice--the
same harsh voice that Johnny described as issuing from the thicket. But
the notion of any person amusing himself by shouting "Vive Napoleon!" in
the forests of a solitary island in the Pacific, seemed so preposterous,
that we could not help coming to the conclusion, that some sudden noise
in the wood had seemed to Johnny's excited imagination like a human
voice--though why he should fancy that it uttered those particular
words--the words of a strange language, was a puzzle which we could not
solve. We, however, turned into the forest, and Johnny pointed out the
spot where he was standing when he heard the voice. There were the
vines, with flowers like morning-glories; and there was the thicket
whence, as he alleged, the sound had proceeded. We shouted aloud
several times, but there was no response, except from a large bird that
rose heavily into the air, uttering a discordant scream; and we were
satisfied that it was this, or some similar sound, that had startled
Johnny; in which conviction we dismissed the matter from our minds.

The flowering vine proved to be the patara, which Arthur had been so
anxious to discover, and on digging it up, two roots, resembling large
potatoes, were found attached to the stalk. Quite a number of these
plants were scattered about the neighbourhood; enough, as Arthur said,
to make a tolerable potato patch.

All this time Max was missing, having been some little distance in
advance of the rest, when Johnny had raised his strange alarm. When we
got back into the ravine, he was not in sight, but we had hardly resumed
our progress towards the shore, when we heard him calling out that he
had found water. At this announcement, our orderly march broke at once
into a hasty scramble. Browne alone maintained his dignity, and came on