cumstances, and though the fast deepening shades of an Australian
evening urged him to return, yet he lingered, unwilling to come back
empty-handed. At last a peremptory signal warned him. It was the sound
of a musket fired on board the brig: Mr. Bates was getting impatient;
and with a scowl, Frere drew up his lines, and ordered the two soldiers
to pull for the vessel.

The Osprey yet sat motionless on the water, and her bare masts gave no
sign of making sail. To the soldiers, pulling with their backs to her,
the musket shot seemed the most ordinary occurrence in the world. Eager
to quit the dismal prison-bay, they had viewed Mr Frere's persistent
fishing with disgust, and had for the previous half hour longed to hear
the signal of recall which had just startled them. Suddenly, however,
they noticed a change of expression in the sullen face of their
commander. Frere, sitting in the stern sheets, with his face to the
Osprey, had observed a peculiar appearance on her decks. The bulwarks
were every now and then topped by strange figures, who disappeared as
suddenly as they came, and a faint murmur of voices floated across the
intervening sea. Presently the report of another musket shot echoed
among the hills, and something dark fell from the side of the vessel
into the water. Frere, with an imprecation of mingled alarm and
indignation, sprang to his feet, and shading his eyes with his hand,
looked towards the brig. The soldiers, resting on their oars, imitated
his gesture, and the whale-boat, thus thrown out of trim, rocked from
side to side dangerously. A moment's anxious pause, and then another
musket shot, followed by a woman's shrill scream, explained all. The
prisoners had seized the brig. "Give way!" cried Frere, pale with rage
and apprehension, and the soldiers, realizing at once the full terror of
their position, forced the heavy whale-boat through the water as fast as
the one miserable pair of oars could take her.

* * * * *

Mr. Bates, affected by the insidious influence of the hour, and lulled
into a sense of false security, had gone below to tell his little
playmate that she would soon be on her way to the Hobart Town of which
she had heard so much; and, taking advantage of his absence, the soldier
not on guard went to the forecastle to hear the prisoners singing. He
found the ten together, in high good humour, listening to a "shanty"
sung by three of their nu