aunching their canoe over the living
bodies of their victims. But there was no pity in the breasts of these
men. Forward they went in ruthless indifference, shouting as they went,
while high above their voices rang the dying shrieks of those wretched
creatures as, one after another, the ponderous canoe passed over them,
burst the eyeballs from their sockets, and sent the life-blood gushing
from their mouths. Oh reader, this is no fiction! I would not, for the
sake of thrilling you with horror, invent so terrible a scene. It was
witnessed. It is true--true as that accursed sin which has rendered the
human heart capable of such diabolical enormities!

When it was over I turned round and fell upon the grass with a deep
groan; but Bill seized me by the arm, and lifting me up as if I had been
a child, cried:

"Come along, lad; let's away!" And so, staggering and stumbling over
the tangled underwood, we fled from the fatal spot.

During the remainder of that day I felt as if I were in a horrible
dream. I scarce knew what was said to me, and was more than once blamed
by the men for idling my time. At last the hour to return aboard came.
We marched down to the beach, and I felt relief for the first time when
my feet rested on the schooner's deck.

In the course of the evening I overheard part of a conversation between
the captain and the first mate, which startled me not a little. They
were down in the cabin, and conversed in an undertone; but the skylight
being off; I overhead every word that was said.

"I don't half-like it," said the mate. "It seems to me that we'll only
have hard fightin' and no pay."

"No pay!" repeated the captain in a voice of suppressed anger. "Do you
call a good cargo all for nothing no pay?"

"Very true," returned the mate; "but we've got the cargo aboard. Why
not cut your cable and take French leave o' them? What's the use o'
tryin' to kill the blackguards when it'll do us no manner o' good?"

"Mate," said the captain in a low voice, "you talk like a fresh-water
sailor. I can only attribute this shyness to some strange delusion, for
surely,"--his voice assumed a slightly sneering tone as he said
this--"surely I am not to suppose that you have become soft-hearted!
Besides, you are wrong in regard to the cargo being aboard; there's a
good quarter of it lying in the woods, and that blackguard chief knows
it, and won't let me take it off. He defied us to do our worst
yesterday."