, byway of keeping the Fejee people at arms' length.
These two extraordinary offices delayed the work on the ways; and when
the whole colony went to breakfast, which they did about an hour after
sunrise, the schooner was not yet in the water, though quite ready to be
put there, Mark announced that there was no occasion to be in a hurry,
no canoes were in sight, and there was time to have everything done
deliberately and in order.

This security came very near proving fatal to the whole party. Most of
the men breakfasted under the awning, which was near their work; while
the women took that meal in their respective quarters. Some of the last
were in the crater, and some in the ship. It will be remembered that the
awning was erected near the spring, and that the spring was but a short
distance from the bridge. This bridge, it will also be recollected,
connected the Reef with an island that stretched away for miles, and
which had formed the original range for the swine, after the changes
that succeeded the eruption. It was composed of merely two long ship's
planks, the passage being only some fifty or sixty feet in width.

The governor, now, seldom ate with his people. He knew enough of human
nature to understand that authority was best preserved by avoiding
familiarity. Besides, there is, in truth, no association more unpleasant
to those whose manners have been cultivated, than that of the table,
with the rude and unrefined. Bridget, for instance, could hardly be
expected to eat with the wives of the seamen; and Mark naturally wished
to eat with his own family. On that occasion he had taken his meal in
the cabin of the Rancocus, as usual, and had come down to the awning to
see that the hands turned-to as soon as they were through with their own
breakfasts. Just as he was about to issue the necessary order, the air
was filled with frightful yells, and a stream of savages poured out of
an opening in the rocks, on to the plain of the "hog pasture," as the
adjoining field was called, rushing forward in a body towards the
crater. They had crept along under the rocks by following a channel, and
now broke cover within two hundred yards of the point they intended to
assail.

The governor behaved admirably on this trying occasion. He issued his
orders clearly, calmly, and promptly. Calling on Bigelow and Jones by
name, he ordered them to withdraw the bridge, which could easily be done
by hauling over the planks by means of wheel