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