And presently, one after another, eight
black heads cautiously lifted themselves above the gunwale. The eyes in
those heads stared wonderingly and apprehensively at the catamaran and
her occupant, their owners evidently holding themselves ready to duck
again at the first sign of danger; but at length, seeing that Leslie was
indisposed to further interfere with them, they seized their remaining
paddles--four only in number, the remainder having been lost overboard
in their panic--and put the canoe dead before the wind.

It was clear to Leslie that, with only four paddles left, the savages
could not possibly propel their canoe to windward and return to his
island; they must perforce go to leeward and make their way back to
their own island as best they could. He had therefore no more to fear
from them--at least for the present; and he accordingly let draw his
fore sheet and, getting way on the catamaran, tacked and bore away for
the mouth of the entrance channel, leaving his enemies to paddle before
the wind and sea, and find their way back home again if they could.

The catamaran had arrived within about six miles of the channel, and
Leslie was already debating within himself the question whether, after
all, it would not have been a wiser and more prudent thing to have put
it beyond the power of his surviving antagonists to return to their
friends, and possibly organise a very much more formidable expedition
against him, and whether, even now, it would not be advisable to go in
chase of and utterly destroy them, when his eye was attracted to a small
triangular object of brownish yellow tint that, brilliantly illuminated
by the bright sunlight, showed up strongly against the dazzling white of
the surf breaking upon the weather edge of the reef. It was in shape
like a shark's fin, but was not the same colour; it was hull down, and
was sliding along at a rapid rate past the wall of surf. It needed but
a single glance to enable Leslie to determine that it was a sail, ay,
and undoubtedly the sail of a native canoe.

Sick with the sudden thought of the possibilities suggested by the
presence of such an object just where he saw it, Dick took a hasty turn
of a rope's-end round the tiller-head and with one bound reached the
weather-shrouds, up which he shinned with an agility equalled only by
the dread that struck like a knife at his heart. In a moment he was
high enough to get a footing upon the throat of the gaff, from wh