," returned Jack, with a critical frown, "they're not just the colour
o' white men. Mayhap, they're a noo style o' savage, this bein' raither
an out-o'-the-way quarter."

"Stand by with a rope there," cried the captain of the vessel, cutting
short the discussion, while the canoe ranged longside.

"Ship ahoy!" shouted Thursday, in the true nautical style which he had
learned from Adams.

If the eyes of the men who looked over the side of the ship were wide
open with surprise before, they seemed to blaze with amazement at the
next remark by Thursday.

"Where d'ye hail from, an' what's your name?" he asked, as Charlie made
fast to the rope which was thrown to them.

"The _Topaz_, from America, Captain Folger," answered the captain, with
a smile.

With an agility worthy of monkeys, and that might have justified Jack
and Bill looking for tails, the brothers immediately stood on the deck,
and holding out their hands, offered with affable smiles to shake hands.
We need scarcely say the offer was heartily accepted by every one of
the crew.

"And who may _you_ be, my good fellows?" asked Captain Folger, with an
amused expression.

"I am Thursday October Christian," answered the youth, drawing himself
up as if he were announcing himself the king of the Cannibal Islands.
"I'm the oldest son of Fletcher Christian, one of the mutineers of the
_Bounty_, an' this is my brother Charlie."

The sailors glanced at each other and then at the stalwart youths, as if
they doubted the truth of the assertion.

"I've heard of that mutiny," said Captain Folger. "It was celebrated
enough to make a noise even on our side of the Atlantic. If I remember
rightly, most of the mutineers were caught on Otaheite and taken to
England, being wrecked and some drowned on the way; the rest were tried,
and some acquitted, some pardoned, and some hanged."

"I know nothin' about all that," said Thursday, with an interested but
perplexed look.

"But I do, sir," said the man whom we have styled Jack, touching his hat
to the captain. "I'm an Englishman, as you knows, an' chanced to be in
England at the very time when the mutineers was tried. There was nine
o' the mutineers, sir, as went off wi' the _Bounty_ from Otaheite, an'
they've never bin heard on from that day to this."

"Yes, yes!" exclaimed Thursday, with sudden animation, "that's _us_.
The nine mutineers came to our island here, Pitcairn, an' remained here
ever since, an' we've all bin