"Obey orders.

The captain's not the man to take an insult tamely.

If Long Tom does not speak presently I'll give myself to the sharks." The men smiled significantly as they pulled from the shore, which was now crowded with a dense mass of savages, amounting, probably, to five or six hundred.

We had not rowed off above a couple of hundred yards when a loud roar thundered over the sea, and the big brass gun sent a withering shower of grape point blank into the midst of the living mass, through which a wide lane was cut, while a yell, the like of which I could not have imagined, burst from the miserable survivors as they fled to the woods.

Amongst the heaps of dead that lay on the sand, just where they had fallen, I could distinguish mutilated forms writhing in agony, while ever and anon one and another rose convulsively from out the mass, endeavoured to stagger towards the wood, and ere they had taken a few steps, fell and wallowed on the bloody sand.