formal paper of indentures, and handed over twenty dollars, a bottle of rum, and a quid of tobacco, as a consolation for the wounded feelings of their distressed relations. You've been carrying them off all night at your devil's game; and now in the morning the natives are beginning to wake up sober, miss their friends, and put a summary stop to your little proceedings. Well, sir, I give you one minute to make up your mind; if you don't hand us over these four lads to set on shore again, we'll open fire upon you; and as we're stronger than you, with the natives at our back, we'll make a prize of you, and tow you into Fiji on a charge of slave-trading."

Before the words were well out of my mouth the French skipper had given the word "Fire!" and the bullets came whizzing past, and riddling the gunwale of the gig beside us. One of them grazed my arm below the shoulder and drew blood. Now there's nothing to put a man's temper up like getting shot in the arm. I lost mine, I confess, and I shouted aloud, "Fire, boys, and row on at them!" Our fellows fired, and the very same moment the natives closed in and went at them with their canoes, all alive with Sniders, lances and hatchets. It was a lively time, I can tell you, for the next five minutes, with those lithe, long black fellows swarming over them like ants; and poor Tom Blake got a bullet from a French rifle in his thigh, that lodges there still in very comfortable quarters. But one of the Frenchmen fell back in the jolly-boat shot through the breast, and the skipper, who turned out to be a fellow with one sound leg and a substitute, was severely wounded. So we'd soon closed in upon them, the natives and ourselves, and overpowered their crew, which was only ten, all told, besides the fellows on the big vessel in the harbor.

Well, we took out the four boys, when the mill was over, and transferred them to our gig; and then we escorted the Frenchmen, ironed in their own handcuffs, to the deck of their sloop, with the natives on either side in their canoes rowing along abreast of us like a guard of honor. The crew of the sloop didn't attempt to interfere with us as we brought their comrades handcuffed aboard; if they had, why, then, with the help of the savages, we should have been more than a match for them. So we prowled around the ship on a voyage of discovery, and found ample evidence in her get-up of her character as an honest and single-hearted recruiter of labor. A rack in the cabin held eight Snider rifles, loaded for use, above which hung eight revolvers, employed doubtless in self-defense against the lawless character of the Kanakas, as the skipper (with his hands in irons and his eyes in tears) most solemnly assured us. The sloop was prepared throughout, with loopholes and battening-hatches, to stand a siege, and could have made short work of the natives alone had they tried to attack her, for she carried a small howitzer, not so big as our own; but she never suspected interference from a European vessel. We went down into her hold, and there we found about forty natives, men, women and children—free agents all, the skipper had declared—packed as tight as herrings in a barrel, and with stench intolerable to the European nostril. Such a sight you never saw in your life. There they lay athwart ship, side by side, the unhappy black cattle, some handcuffed and manacled, others dead-drunk and too careless to complain, while the women and children were crying and screaming, and the men were shouting as loud as they could shout in their own lingo.

Fortunately, we had a sailor aboard the Albatross who had been a beach-comber (or degraded white man who lives like a native) for three years on the island of Ambrymon, and had a Kanaka girl for a sweetheart; so he could talk their palaver almost as easy as you can English, and he acted as interpreter for us with the poor people in the hold. We knocked their handcuffs off, and explained the situation to them. About a dozen of the wretchedest and most squalid-looking of the lot were prepared, even when we offered them freedom, to stand by their last night's bargain, and go on to New Caledonia; but the remainder were only too delighted to learn that they might go ashore again; and they gave us three ringing British cheers as soon as they understood we had really liberated them.

As for the four boys we'd got in the gig, three of them elected at once to go home to their own people on the island; but the fourth was our present black servant, Nassaline. He, poor boy, was an orphan; and his nearest relations, having held a consultation the day before whether they should bake him and eat him, or sell him to the Frenchman, had decided that after all he would be worth more if paid for in tobacco and rum than if roasted in plantain-leaves. So, as soon as he found we were going to put him on shore again, the poor creature was afraid after all he was being returned for the oven; and flinging himself on his face in the gig, groveling and cringing, he took hold of our knees and besought us most piteously (as our sailor translated his words for us) to take him with us. Of course, when we entered into the spirit of the situation, we felt it was impossible to send the poor fellow back to be made "long pig" of; so, to his immense delight, we took him along, and a more faithful servant no man ever had than poor Nassaline proved from that day forth to me.

I've gone out of my way so far, as I said before, to tell you this little episode of life in the South Pacific, partly in order to let you know who Nassaline was and how we came by him; but partly also to give you a side glimpse of the sort of gentry, both European and native, one may chance to knock up against in those remote regions. It'll help you to understand the rest of my yarn. And now, if you please, I'll tack back again once more into my proper course, to the spot where I broke off in sight of Erromanga.

CHAPTER II.

THE BOAT'S CREW.

Presently, as we headed towards the black object on the horizon, Nassaline stretched out that skinny finger of his once more (no amount of feeding ever seemed to make Nassaline one ounce fatter), and cried out in his shrill little piping voice, "Two man on the boat! him makey signs for call us!"

I'd give anything to have eyes as sharp as those Polynesians. I looked across the sea, and the loppy waves in the foreground, and could just make out with the naked eye that the row-boat had something that looked like a red handkerchief tied to her bare mast, and a white signal flapping in the wind below it; but not a living soul could I distinguish in her without my binocular. So I put up my glasses and looked again. Sure enough, there they were, two miserable objects, clinging as it seemed half-dead to the mast, and making most piteous signs with their hands to attract our attention. As soon as they saw that we had really sighted them, and were altering our course to pick them up, their joy and delight knew no bounds, as we judged. They flung up their arms ecstatically into the air, and then sank back, exhausted, as I guessed, on to the thwarts where they had long ceased sitting or rowing.

They were wearied out, I imagined, with long buffeting against that angry and immeasurable sea, and must soon have succumbed to fatigue if we hadn't caught sight of them.

We put on all