s, and sent him down. Allen picked
him up, dumped him into the boat alongside, and sent him ashore.

When the _Tucopia_ lay high and dry on Apia beach Otway and old Bruce
walked round under her counter and looked for the leak. As the skipper
had surmised, a butt-end had started, but the gaping orifice was now
choked and filled with a large piece of seaweed.

"The prayer of one of God's ain ministers has saved us," said the Scotch
mate, pointing upward.

"No doubt," replied Otway, who knew that the good old man had heard
nothing of what had happened.

_The Man in the Buffalo Hide_

Twelve years ago in a North Queensland town I was told the story of "The
Man in the Buffalo Hide" by Ned D----. He (D----) was then a prosperous
citizen, having made a small fortune by "striking it rich" on the
Gilbert and Etheridge Rivers goldfields. Returning from the arid wastes
of the Queensland back country to Sydney, he tired of leading an
inactive life, and hearing that gold had been discovered on one of the
Solomon Islands, he took passage thither in the Sydney whaling barque
_Costa Rica_ packet, and though he returned to Australia without
discovering gold in the islands, he had kept one of the most interesting
logs of a whaling cruise it has ever been my fortune to read. The master
of the whaleship was Captain J.Y. Carpenter, a man who is well known
and highly respected, not only in Sydney (where he now resides), but
throughout the East Indies and China, where he had lived for over thirty
years. And it was from Captain Carpenter who was one of the actors in
this twice-told tragedy, that D----heard this story of Chinese
vengeance. He (D----) related it to me in '88, and I wish I could write
the tale as well and vividly as he told it. However, I wrote it out for
him then and there. Much to our disgust the editor of the little journal
to whom we sent the MS., considered it a fairy tale, and cut it down to
some two or three hundred words. I mention these apparently unnecessary
details merely that the reader may not think that the tale is fiction,
for two years or so after, Captain Carpenter corroborated my friend's
story.

* * * * *

It was after the Taeping rebellion had been stamped out in blood and
fire by Gordon and his "Ever Victorious Army," and the Viceroy (Li Hung
Chang) had taken up his quarters in Canton, and was secretly torturing
and beheading those prisoners whom he had sworn to