said, in a stern undertone:

"Are you aware that you forfeit your life if my vessel strikes?"

"I know it," replied Gascoyne, coolly throwing away the stump of his
cigar, and lighting a fresh one; "but I have no desire either to destroy
your vessel or to lose my life; although, to say truth, I should have no
objection, in other circumstances, to attempt the one and to risk the
other."

"Say you so?" said Montague, with a sharp glance at the countenance of
the other, where, however, he could perceive nothing but placid good
humor; "that speech sounds marvelously warlike, methinks in the mouth
of a sandal-wood trader."

"Think you, then," said Gascoyne, with a smile of contempt, "that it is
only your fire-eating men of war who experience bold impulses and heroic
desires?"

"Nay; but traders are not wont to aspire to the honor of fighting the
ships that are commissioned to protect them."

"Truly, if I had sought protection from the war-ships of the King of
England, I must have sailed long and far to find it," returned Gascoyne.
"It is no child's play to navigate these seas, where bloodthirsty
savages swarm in their canoes like locusts. Moreover, I sail, as I have
told you before, in the China Seas, where pirates are more common than
honest traders. What would you say if I were to take it into my head to
protect myself?"

"That you were well able to do so," answered Montague, with a smile;
"but when I examined the Foam, I found no arms save a few cutlasses and
rusty muskets that did not seem to have been in recent use."

"A few bold men can defend themselves with any kind of weapons. My men
are stout fellows, not used to flinch at the sound of a round shot
passing over their heads."

The conversation was interrupted here by the ship rounding a point and
suddenly opening up a view of a fine bay, at the head of which,
embosomed in trees and dense underwood, stood the native village of
which they were in search.

Just in front of this village lay a small but high and thickly-wooded
island, which, as it were, filled up the head of the bay, sheltering it
completely from the ocean, and making the part of the sea which washed
the shores in front of the houses resemble a deep and broad canal. This
stripe of water was wide and deep enough to permit of a vessel of the
largest size passing through it; but to any one approaching the place
for the first time, there seemed to be no passage for any sort of craft
larger than