interestedly to inspect various articles which the savages seemed to be
urging them to purchase. As I continued to watch them through the glass
I saw first one of our men and then another emerge from the crowd, go to
the boat, and carefully deposit something--probably a "curio" of some
kind--in her sternsheets, and then rejoin the laughing, gesticulating
throng. This went on for something like twenty minutes, by the end of
which time my patience was quite exhausted; and I directed one of the
hands to get out the ensign and bend it on to the main signal halyards
while I went below to get a gun, intending to hoist the ensign and at
the same time fire the gun in the air as a signal of recall to the
recalcitrant boat's crew. But when I returned on deck with the loaded
weapon I was just in time to see the entire crowd retiring up the
pathway, leaving the boat abandoned on the shore, with about a foot of
her forefoot hauled up on the beach and her painter made fast to one of
her stretchers, which had been thrust like a peg for about half its
length into the sand!

The man who was standing by to hoist the ensign grinned as he caught my
eye. "I guess them three jokers have toddled off up to the village," he
said.

But I had my doubts, and did not like the appearance of things at all;
my former suspicions rushed back with redoubled force, and--

"Hoist away that ensign," I said curtly; and as the man began to pull
upon the halyards I lifted the gun to my shoulder, and, pointing it well
out to seaward, pulled the trigger. By the time that the smoke cleared
away not a native was to be seen!

CHAPTER NINE.

TREACHERY!

My first feeling was one of simple annoyance with the three men who
constituted the boat's crew, because they had permitted themselves to be
cajoled into visiting the village and leaving the boat unprotected upon
the beach, instead of returning to the ship immediately after landing
the skipper, as I had instructed them to do. But when a full hour had
elapsed, with no sign of the return of the truants, my annoyance began
to give place to a feeling of rapidly growing anxiety; and when that
hour grew to two, with still no sign of the absentees, my anxiety merged
into a feeling of downright alarm--nay, more than alarm, into a
conviction that something very serious had happened.

And now I found myself in an exceedingly awkward predicament; for while
I felt that something ought to be done, I could not,