ng trumpet. Of course I
didn't hear a word, but it was easy enough to put two and two together,
remembering the sea meaning of a yellow flag which is seldom else than
smallpox. Yes, that was why we had all took and died in the new
cemetery, and that was why the settlement looked so lifeless and
deserted! After no end of a powwow they hoisted out a boat, and when it
was loaded to the gunwales with stores and cases, it was cast off for
Peter to pick up and take in tow. It held half a ton of medical
comforts, and I often had the pleasure of drinking some of them
afterwards on Mr. Clemm's veranda, where we all agreed it was prime
stuff and exactly suited to our complaints.

What old David thought of it all through the bars of the coral jail can
only be left to the imagination. He had been banking on the _Evangel_ to
turn the scales against Mr. Clemm, and there she was heading out of the
lagoon again, not to return for another year! We celebrated it that
night with medical comforts unstinted, while the natives they
celebrated, too, thankful to find the world still here and the Day of
Judgment postponed. Old David wrote a red-hot protest, countersigned by
the deacons, and not knowing what else to do with it, sealed it in a
demijohn and threw it into the sea, where like enough it still is,
bobbing around undelivered to the missionary society and still waiting
for the angels to take charge of it.

Mr. Clemm's next move was to start building a small cutter of twenty
tons, which he named the _Felicity_ and charged to the government as an
official yacht. Old man Fosby had been a shipwright in years gone by,
and under his direction the Kanakas made a mighty fine job of the little
vessel, which was fitted up regardless and proved to be remarkably fast
and weatherly. She was the apple of the Commissioner's eye, with a crew
of four in uniform, and a half-caste Chinaman named Henry for captain,
whom he had persuaded to desert from a German schooner where he was
mate. Mr. Clemm was so fond of taking short cruises in the _Felicity_
that we never gave his coming and going much thought, till one day he
went off and never came back! Yes, sir, clean disappeared over the
horizon and was never seen again from that day to this, nor the party
with him which included several very fine-looking young women!

The natives took it like the loss of a father, which indeed it was, Mr.
Clemm being a grand man and universally beloved--kindly yet strict,