CHAPTER XXI.
METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN.
All the hopes of the three Europeans were concentrated now on the bare off-chance of a passing steamer.

M.Peyron in particular was fully convinced that, if the Australasian had found the inner channel practicable, other ships in future would follow her example.

With this idea firmly fixed in his head, he arranged with Felix that one or other of them should keep watch alternately by night as far as possible; and he also undertook that a canoe should constantly be in readiness to carry them away to the supposititious ship, if occasion arose for it.

Muriel took counsel with Mali on the question of rousing the Frenchman if a steamer appeared, and they were the first to sight it; and Mali, in whom renewed intercourse with white people had restored to some extent the civilized Queensland attitude of mind, readily enough promised to assist in their scheme, provided she was herself taken with them, and so relieved from the terrible vengeance which would otherwise overtake her.
"If Boupari man catch me," she said, in her simple, graphic, Polynesian way, "Boupari man kill me, and lay me in leaves, and cook me very nice, and make great feast of me, like him do with Jani." From that untimely end both Felix and Muriel promised faithfully, as far as in them lay, to protect her.
To communicate with M.Peyron by daytime, without arousing the ever-wakeful suspicion of the natives, Felix hit upon an excellent plan.
He burnished his metal matchbox to the very highest polish it was capable of taking, and then heliographed by means of sun-flashes on the Morse code.

He had learned the code in Fiji in the course of his official duties; and he taught the Frenchman now readily enough how to read and reply with the other half of the box, torn off for the purpose.
It was three or four days, however, before the two English wanderers ventured to return M.Peyron's visit.