e you getting the steam up, captain?" asked Jack eagerly.

"Yes; can't you hear the fires going?"

Jack had been too much excited to notice any one special thing in the
preparations to resist an attack, but he was now conscious of a dull
humming sound which he knew was the softened roar of the furnaces.

"The yacht's like a useless log lying here becalmed," continued the
captain; "but once I have a good head of steam on she becomes a living
creature, and I can do anything with her--and with them if they don't
behave themselves. I don't want to run down and drown any of the poor
wretches; but if they attack us they must take the consequences."

"Poor ignorant creatures!" said Sir John. "I suppose they don't know
our power."

"That's it," replied Captain Bradleigh. "The more savage a man is,
according to my experience, the more vain and conceited he seems. He
believes in himself thoroughly, for he is generally vigorous and active
as a wild beast, and looks down on an ordinary white man with a kind of
scorn. You would be surprised, Mr Jack, what a number of lessons have
to be given him before he will believe in our machinery and weapons of
war, unless you can appeal to his brain by making him believe that they
are what the Scotchman calls uncanny. If you once find him thinking
that steam, or the gun which kills a man a couple of hundred yards away,
is the result of fetish or the bunyip, or a diabolical spirit, he's the
greatest coward under the sun. Give them another brush over with the
light, my lad."

The man in charge of the great star sent the rays sweeping over the sea,
once more making the dazzling beam play here and there at his will, upon
first one and then another of the blacks in the canoes, with the result
that they were all thrown into a state of confusion, each as the light
dazzled his eyes ducking down right into the bottom of his vessel, or
trying to bend behind his neighbour and to escape from the terrible
blazing eye, which seemed to go through him.

"That's right," said Sir John.

"Now if we can only keep them off for an hour longer I don't care. Give
me that time and I'll chase them all out to sea before they know where
they are, or send them to the bottom if they don't mind."

The suppressed excitement on board the yacht was tremendous, but the men
worked without a word. The thick net was strongly fixed so as to act as
a barrier to the enemy who might try to climb on board. The yacht'