ching still nearer to the shore of the doubtful islet, enabled him
to see and distinguish beyond the possibility of doubt a flag floating
from the top of its staff, which rose tall and tapering from the very
highest point of land which the place afforded!

The flag was of crimson cloth,--apparently a piece of bunting. It
floated freely upon the breeze; which the filmy mist, though half
disclosing, could not altogether conceal. The deep red colour was too
scarce upon the ocean to be mistaken for the livery of any of its
denizens. It could not be the tail-feathers of the tropic bird so
prized by the chiefs of Polynesia; nor yet the scarlet pouch of the
sea-hawk.

It could be nothing else than a "bit o' buntin'."

So, at length, believed Ben Brace, and his belief, expressed in his own
peculiar _patois_, produced conviction in the minds of all, that the
object extending along a hundred fathoms of the horizon, "must be eyther
a rock, a reef, or a island; and the creeturs movin' over it must be
men, weemen, an' childer!"

CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN.

THE KING OF THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS.

The emphatic declaration of the sailor,--that the dark disc before them
must be an island, and that the upright forms upon it were those of
human beings,--dispelled all doubts upon the subject; and produced a
feeling of wild excitement in the minds of all three of his companions.

So strong was this feeling, that they could no longer control
themselves; but gave vent to their emotions in a simultaneous shout of
joy.

Acting prudently, they would have restrained that mirthful exhibition,
for although, for reasons already stated, the people appearing upon the
island could not be the wicked castaways who had composed the crew of
the _Pandora_, still might they be a tribe of savages equally wicked and
murderous.

Who could tell that it was not a community of _Cannibals_. No one
aboard the _Catamaran_.

It may seem singular that such a thought should have entered the mind of
any of the individuals who occupied the raft. But it did occur to some
of them; and to one of the four in particular. This was Ben Brace
himself.

The sailor's experience, so far from destroying the credences of
boyhood,--which included the existence of whole tribes of cannibals,--
had only strengthened his belief in such anthropophagi.

More than strengthened it: for it had been confirmed in every
particular.

He had been to the Fiji islands, where he had se