s them down to
the beach, and burns them alive over a slow fire. And then they toss the
ashes out to sea, and think all the bad luck goes away with the tide. Oh,
I never was in such a hole as this!"

Bludger's words made me shudder. I had never forgotten the hideous
sacrifice, doubtless the Thargeelyah, as they called it, that greeted me
when I was first cast ashore on the island. To think that I had only
been saved that I might figure as a victim of some of their heathen gods!

Oh, now the thought came back to me with a bitter repentance, that if I
had only converted all the islanders, they would never have dreamed of
sacrificing me in honour of a mere idol! Why had I been so lukewarm, why
had I backslidden, why had I endeavoured to make myself agreeable by
joining in promiscuous dances, when I should have been thundering against
Pagan idolatry, holy water, idols, sacrifices and the whole abominable
system of life on the island? True, I might have goaded them into
slaying me; I might have suffered as a martyr; but, at the least, I would
have deserved the martyr's crown. And now I was to perish at the stake,
without even the precious consolation of being a real martyr, and was to
be flogged into the bargain.

I gave a hollow groan as these reflections passed through my mind, and
this appeared to afford William Bludger some consolation.

"You don't seem to like it yourself, Capt'n; what's your advice? We're
both in the same boat; leastways I wish we _were_ in a boat; anyhow we're
both in the same hole."

There was no denying this, and it was high time to mature some plan of
escape. Already I must have been missed by my attendants, my gaolers
rather, who would have returned from their festival, and would be looking
for me everywhere.

I bitterly turned over in my mind the facts of our situation; "ours,"
for, as a just punishment of my remissness, I was in the same quandary as
a drunken, dissipated sailor before the mast.

If William had but possessed a sweet and tuneful voice (often a gift
found in the most depraved natures), and if I had been able to borrow a
harmonium on wheels, I would not, even now, have despaired of converting
the whole island in the course of the week. As remarkable feats have
been performed, with equal alacrity, by precious Messrs. Moody and
Sankey, and I am informed that expeditious conversions are by no means
infrequent among politicians. But it was vain to think of this resourc