h's tail; then there was a violent eddy at the
boat's side, a great shovel-shaped head rose, and the monster shot out
of the water, rising several feet and falling with a crash across the
main boom of the outrigger, taking it down lower and lower, while Carey
clung to the other side of the boat. The water came creeping in over
the lower side, and they would, he felt, be taken down and lie at the
mercy of the enemy the blacks had tried to destroy.

In rushed the water faster and faster, and Carey looked towards the
shore to see how far it was to swim, when all at once the weight glided
off the great bamboo, which rose quickly, the boat was level again, but
half full of water, and the blacks chattered and grinned with delight,
as they began shovelling the water out on both sides with their paddles.

Jackum used his hands, but stopped short directly after to point.

"Tickum, tickum. Mumkull," he cried, and Carey made out the spear-shaft
performing some strange gyrations some twenty yards away, before it once
more disappeared.

As Carey owned afterwards to the doctor and Bostock, he still felt a
little white, and his heart was beating heavily. But it calmed down
rapidly as he felt that the worst that was to happen to him was to feel
his legs wet until the sun had dried his trousers and boots, while the
blacks chattered away, taking it as an every-day occurrence, rapidly
emptying the boat, and once more in high glee paddling hard for the
shore, where the great enjoyments of the day were to begin.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

As Carey landed he glanced at the now enormous stack of pearl shells and
at the tubs once more well filled with oysters, for the beachcomber had
not let his men be idle. But the sight of the treasures of which they
had been robbed only irritated the boy, and he turned away to forget it
in encountering the grinning face of Black Jack close by.

"Come, fro boomerang," he said, handing the wooden scimitar-like blade,
and pointing along the sands.

"Ah," cried the boy, eagerly, "give me hold."

As he caught the boomerang, the other blacks started off along the sands
as if they were going to field for a ball, and Carey laughed as he
prepared to throw.

"It will begin to sail up before it gets to them," he thought to
himself, laughingly, and he rather enjoyed the idea of the big, lithe
fellows running through the hot sand in vain.

Then, imitating, as he thought, the black's action exactly, Carey