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he white man and his boy, and bring them food and mats for their immediate necessities. ***** An hour or two afterwards, as the ship that had landed him at Lela sailed slowly past the white line of surf which fringed the northern side of the island, the captain, looking shoreward from his deck, saw the white man and his boy walking along the beach towards a lonely native house on the farthest point. Behind them followed a number of half-nude natives, carrying mats and baskets of food. Only once did the man turn his face towards the ship, and the captain and mate, catching his glance, waved their hands to him in mute farewell. A quick upward and outward motion of his hand was the only response to their signal, and then he walked steadily along without looking seaward again. "Queer fellow that, Matthews," said the captain to his mate. "I wonder how the deuce he got to the Bonins and where he came from. He's not a runaway convict, anyway--you can see that by the look in his eye. Seems a decent, quiet sort of a man, too. What d'ye think he is yourself?" "Runaway man-o'war's man," said Matthews, looking up aloft. "What the devil would he come aboard us at night-time in a fairly civilised place like the Bonin Islands as soon as he heard that the _Juno_, frigate, was lying at anchor ten miles away from us there. And, besides that, you can see he's a sailor, although he didn't want to show it." "Aye," said the captain, "likely enough that's what he is. Perhaps he's one of the seven that ran away from Sir Thomas Staine's ship in the South Pacific some years ago." And Mr. Matthews, the mate of the barque _Oliver Cromwell_ was perfectly correct in his surmise, for the strange white man who had stolen aboard the ship so quietly in the Bonin Islands was a deserter from his Majesty William IV.'s ship _Tagus_. For nearly seven years he had wandered from one island to another, haunted by the fear of recapture and death since the day when, in a mad fit of passion, he had, while ashore with a watering party, driven his cutlass through the body of a brutal petty officer who had threatened, for some trifling dereliction of duty, to get him "a couple of dozen." Horror-stricken at the result of his deadly blow, he had fled into the dense jungle of the island, and here for many days the wretched man lived in hiding till he was found by a party of natives, who fed and brought him back to life, for he was all but dead from hunger
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