ed over to it. We found that
she was stripped of everything of value, even the chain-plates having
been cut out, the decks were torn up and partly burnt, and the anchors
and cables were gone; in fact, she was nothing but a shell.

"'Been looted by the niggers,' I said to Warby. 'Hope the poor chaps
that manned her got away in the boat; better for 'em to have been
drowned than be eaten by these beggars about here.'

"'We'll soon see,' said he. 'It's my opinion they did get away safely.
Look over there, Potter, at those niggers waiting for us on the beach;
now if they had cut off this vessel they would have bolted into the
bush, or begun firing at us. Come on.'

"We walked back to the boats and then pulled over to the village, which
was about eight hundred yards away, Warby's boat, of course, going
first. About thirty or forty natives came down to the water's edge and
waited. They were all armed with bows, spears, and clubs, but seemed
friendly.

"However, Warby jumped boldly out on to the beach, and telling his crew
to keep her afloat in case he had to run for it, he went up to the crowd
of niggers and shook hands with some of them; I and my chaps in the
covering boat keeping our rifles out of view, but quite ready.

"In about five minutes Warby sang out to me that it was all right. The
vessel, the natives told him, had parted her cables, gone ashore and
bilged on the reef in the night; and the hands being too frightened to
come ashore, had gone away next morning in two boats. Then he told me to
wait a few minutes, as he was going to the chief's house to look at the
copper and other gear that the natives had taken from the schooner, and
very likely he would buy it. First of all, though, he told Sarreo to
pass him out a 12 lb. case of tobacco as a present for the chief.

"He took the case from Sarreo and handed it to the chief, and then
off they went--he in the middle of thirty or forty murderous-looking
savages; but he had done the same thing so often before that we did not
feel any particular alarm.

"We lay there, backed stern on to the beach, for about five minutes,
looking at the house into which he had gone with the natives. Suddenly
we saw him burst out of the house and fall on his knees, trying to draw
his revolver; but in another moment he was being tomahawked and clubbed
by a mob of yelling devils! Poor chap, he must have died very quickly.

"We opened fire at once and they disappeared like magic, and th