"Hah!" ejaculated Ngati, with a peculiar grunt. His men all acted with
military precision, and, to Don's astonishment, he found himself plunged
into a rocky basin of hot water.

His first idea was to struggle, but there was no need. He had been
lowered in rapidly but gently, and he felt Ngati place the back of his
head softly against a smooth pleasantly-warm hollowed-out stone, while
the sensation, after all he had gone through, was so delicious that he
uttered a sigh of satisfaction.

For now he realised the hospitality of the people who had brought him
there, and the fact that to recover him from the chill of being half
drowned, they had brought him to one of their hot springs, used by them
as baths.

Don uttered another sigh of satisfaction, and as he lay back covered to
his chin in the hot volcanic water, he began to laugh so heartily that
the tears came into his eyes.

For the same process was going on in the darkness with Jem, who was a
less tractable patient, especially as he had taken it into his thick
head that it was not for his benefit that he was to be plunged into a
hot water pool, but to make soup for the New Zealanders around.

"Mas' Don!" he cried out of the darkness, "where are you? I want to get
out of this. Here, be quiet, will yer? What yer doing of? I say.
Don't. Here, what are you going to do?"

Don wanted to say a word to calm Jem's alarms, but after the agony he
had gone through, it seemed to him as if his nerves were relaxed beyond
control, and his companion's perplexity presented itself to him in so
comical a light, that he could do nothing but lie back there in his
delicious bath, and laugh hysterically; and all the while he could hear
the New Zealanders gobbling angrily in reply to Jem's objections, as a
fierce struggle went on.

"That's your game, is it? I wouldn't ha' thought it of a set who calls
theirselves men. Shove me into that hot pot, and boil me, would you?
Not if I knows it, you don't. Hi! Mas' Don! Look out! Run, my lad.
They're trying to cook me alive, the brutes. Oh, if I only had a
cutlash, or an iron bar."

Don tried to speak again, but the words were suffocated by the gurgle of
laughter.

"Poor old Jem!" he thought.

"I tell you, you sha'n't. Six to one, eh? Leave off. Mas' Don,
they're going to scald me like a pig in a tub. Hi! Help!"

There was the sound of a struggle, a loud splash, and then silence,
followed by Jem's voice.

"Oh!" he