to have hailed our approach
with the utmost delight? But then again, we were taken for phantoms,
not flesh and blood. Upon the whole, I regarded the narrator of these
things somewhat distrustfully. But he met my gaze like a man. While
Annatoo, standing by, looked so expressively the Amazonian character
imputed to her, that my doubts began to waver. And recalling
all the little incidents of their story, so hard to be conjured up on
the spur of a presumed necessity to lie; nay, so hard to be conjured
up at all; my suspicions at last gave way. And I could no longer
harbor any misgivings.

For, to be downright, what object could Samoa have, in fabricating
such a narrative of horrors--those of the massacre, I mean--unless to
conceal some tragedy, still more atrocious, in which he himself had
been criminally concerned? A supposition, which, for obvious reasons,
seemed out of the question. True, instances were known to me of half-
civilized beings, like Samoa, forming part of the crews of ships in
these seas, rising suddenly upon their white ship-mates, and
murdering them, for the sake of wrecking the ship on the shore of
some island near by, and plundering her hull, when stranded.

But had this been purposed with regard to the Parki, where the rest
of the mutineers? There was no end to my conjectures; the more I
indulged in them, the more they multiplied. So, unwilling to torment
myself, when nothing could be learned, but what Samoa related, and
stuck to like a hero; I gave over conjecturing at all; striving hard
to repose full faith in the Islander.

Jarl, however, was skeptical to the last; and never could be brought
completely to credit the tale. He stoutly maintained that the
hobgoblins must have had something or other to do with the Parki.

My own curiosity satisfied with respect to the brigantine, Samoa
himself turned inquisitor. He desired to know who we were; and whence
we came in our marvelous boat. But on these heads I thought best to
withhold from him the truth; among other things, fancying that if
disclosed, it would lessen his deference for us, as men superior to
himself. I therefore spoke vaguely of our adventures, and assumed the
decided air of a master; which I perceived was not lost upon the rude
Islander. As for Jarl, and what he might reveal, I embraced the first
opportunity to impress upon him the importance of never divulging our
flight from the Arcturion; nor in any way to commit himself on that
he