e he stood, "Ahoy, there, on Prison
Island! You Hare, don't you know that rum and roast pig are not a
sailor's heaven?" Hare said afterward that one might have heard the
captain's roar across to Java.

The lawless establishment was soon broken up by the women deserting
Prison Island and putting themselves under Ross's protection. Hare
then went to Batavia, where he met his death.

[Illustration: The _Spray_ ashore for "boot-topping" at the Keeling
Islands. (From a photograph.)]

My first impression upon landing was that the crime of infanticide had
not reached the islands of Keeling Cocos. "The children have all come
to welcome you," explained Mr. Ross, as they mustered at the jetty by
hundreds, of all ages and sizes. The people of this country were all
rather shy, but, young or old, they never passed one or saw one
passing their door without a salutation. In their musical voices they
would say, "Are you walking?" ("Jalan, jalan?") "Will you come along?"
one would answer.

For a long time after I arrived the children regarded the "one-man
ship" with suspicion and fear. A native man had been blown away to sea
many years before, and they hinted to one another that he might have
been changed from black to white, and returned in the sloop. For some
time every movement I made was closely watched. They were particularly
interested in what I ate. One day, after I had been "boot-topping" the
sloop with a composition of coal-tar and other stuff, and while I was
taking my dinner, with the luxury of blackberry jam, I heard a
commotion, and then a yell and a stampede, as the children ran away
yelling: "The captain is eating coal-tar! The captain is eating
coal-tar!" But they soon found out that this same "coal-tar" was very
good to eat, and that I had brought a quantity of it. One day when I
was spreading a sea-biscuit thick with it for a wide-awake youngster,
I heard them whisper, "Chut-chut!" meaning that a shark had bitten my
hand, which they observed was lame. Thenceforth they regarded me as a
hero, and I had not fingers enough for the little bright-eyed tots
that wanted to cling to them and follow me about. Before this, when I
held out my hand and said, "Come!" they would shy off for the nearest
house, and say, "Dingin" ("It's cold"), or "Ujan" ("It's going to
rain"). But it was now accepted that I was not the returned spirit of
the lost black, and I had plenty of friends about the island, rain or
shine.

One day after