Just one volley was fired at the advancing canoes, which staggered and sent them back, and before they had recovered from their consternation the sails were set, and the Island Queen stood steadily out to sea.
But the shooting of that foul bird had ruined everything, as far as peace was concerned.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE WHOLE BEACH WAS LINED WITH YELLING SAVAGES.
Captain Fred Arundel, of the Island Queen, now left the island of King Ota far astern, and proceeded to take a quiet survey of the whole group.
The islands were five in all, although one was so small as hardly to be worthy of notice. It is nevertheless the most important of all to our story. This little isle, although well treed, was evidently not inhabited, and had only one landing-place, all the rest of its shore being as inaccessible as the Bass Rock itself.
The other islands were inhabited, as well they might be; for in rugged grandeur of contour, and in beauty of tropical foliage, they exceeded anything that Fred or Frank could have imagined or dreamt about.
Waving cocoa-nut and palm trees, gigantic tree ferns, bananas, pandanus, and bread fruits, and a wealth of waving woods and grasses and flowers, that made them look like veritable fairy-lands afloat, or the fabled islands of the blessed dead we read of in the classics. Yet everyone of them was the abode of savages and cannibals. No boats came off from either, though in one of the bays Fred lay at anchor for very many hours.
He was concocting a bold and daring scheme, which if successful should mean freedom for the white prisoners, whatever might befall them next; but if unsuccessful it would mean death, or a slavery far worse than death, for all concerned.
That the inhabitants of these islands were not really bad at heart was Fred's evident thought, from the kindly way their own two prisoners took to work and civilization.