reached at last he turned and faced them, for
every canoe was gone.

The officer motioned to his men to stand back.

"Brandon, there is no chance for you. Do not add another crime to that
which you have already committed."

"No, sir; no. I shall do no more harm to any one in the King's service,
but I will never be taken alive."

He pressed the muzzle of his pistol to his heart, pulled the trigger,
and fell dead at their feet.

OXLEY, THE PRIVATEERSMAN

I.

All day long the _Indiana_, Tom de Wolfs island trading brig, had tried
to make Tucopia Island, an isolated spot between Vanikoro and the New
Hebrides, but the strong westerly current was too much for her with such
a failing breeze; and Packenham, the skipper, had agreed with Denison,
his supercargo, to let Tucopia "slide" till the brig was coming south
again from the Marshalls.

"Poor old Oxley won't like seeing us keep away," said Denison. "I
promised him that we would be sure to give him a call this time on our
way up. Poor old chap! I wish we could send him a case of grog ashore to
cheer him up. But a thirty miles' pull dead to windward and against
such a current is rather too much of a job even for a boat's crew of
natives."

But about midnight the breeze freshened from the eastward, and by
daylight the smooth, shapely cone of the green little island stood
up clear and sharply defined from its surrounding narrow belt of
palm-covered shore in a sunlit sea of sparkling blue, and Denison told
the captain to get the boat ready.

"Ten miles or so isn't much--we can sail there and back in the boat."

Tucopia was a long way out of the _Indiana's_, usual cruising ground;
but a year or so before a French barque had gone ashore there, and
Denison had bought the wreck from her captain on behalf of Mr. Tom De
Wolf. And as he had no white man on board to spare, he had handed his
purchase over to the care of Oxley, the one European on the island.

"Strip her, Jack, and then set a light to her hull--there's a lot of
good metal bolts in it. You shall have half of whatever we get out of
the sale of her gear."

And so old Jack Oxley, who had settled on Tucopia because forty-five
years before he had married a Tucopian girl, when he was a wandering
boat-steerer in the colonial whaling fleet, and was now too shaky to go
to sea, shook Denison's hand gratefully, and was well satisfied at the
prospect of making a few hundred pounds so easily.

A quiet, bl