es and the captain."

"Go in another direction."

"Out of the frying-pan into the fire," said Jem, grinning. "Say, Mas'
Don, how do they cook their food?"

"Don't talk nonsense, Jem; that's only a traveller's tale. I believe
the people here will behave kindly to us."

"Till we got fat," said Jem, chuckling; "and then they'd have a tuck
out. No, thank ye, Mas' Don; my Sally wouldn't like it. You see, I'm
nice and plump and round now, and they'd soon use me. You're a great
long growing boy, thin as a lath, and it'd take years to make you fit to
kill, so as it don't matter for you."

"There is a chance open to us now for escape," said Don bitterly; "to
get right away, and journey to some port, where we could get a passage
to England as sailors, and you treat it with ridicule."

"Not I, Mas' Don, lad."

"You do, Jem. Such a chance may never occur again; and I shall never be
happy till I have told my mother what is the real truth about our going
away."

"But you did write it to her, Mas' Don."

"Write! What is writing to speaking? I thought you meant to stand by
me."

"So I do, Mas' Don, when a good chance comes. It hasn't come yet."

"Ahoy!"

A hail came out of the dense growth some fifty yards away.

"There," said Jem, "you see we couldn't get off; some one coming back."

"Ahoy!" came again; "boat ahoy!"

"Ahoy! Ahoy!" shouted back Jem, and the two boat-keepers watched the
moving ferns in front of them, expecting to see the straw hat of a
messmate directly; but instead there appeared the black white-tipped
feathers, and then the hideously tattooed bluish face of a savage,
followed directly after by another, and two stalwart men came out on to
the sands, and began to walk slowly down toward the boat.

"Cock your pistol, Mas' Don," whispered Jem, "quiet-like; don't let 'em
see. They've got their spears and choppers. Precious ready too with
their _ahoys_."

"Why, it's that tattooed Englishman, Jem, and that savage who called me
his pakeha."

"And like his impudence!" said Jem. "You're right though, so it is."

"Morning, mate," said the Englishman, who, save that he was a little
lighter in colour than his hideous-looking companion, could hardly be
distinguished from him.

"Morning, my hearty," said Jem. "What is it? Want a passage home?"

"Do I want what?" growled the man. "Not I; too well off here."

"Wouldn't be safe to go back, p'r'aps," said Jem meaningly.

The man darted a fie