This savage, in conversation with Stransom, said his people had taken the ship for a blackbirder, and were determined to slay every man on board. This was not very comforting, and for the present, at all events, the best thing that our heroes could do was to lie perdu. “Defence not defiance” must now be their motto. Stratagem might come in afterwards.
* * * * *
To say the least—the position of Fitzroy and his friends was one that could not be envied.
On the one hand they had water and provisions enough to last them for a very long time indeed, but they were literally in a stage of seige. There was no saying what might occur at any moment. Not less than five hundred wild natives lived on this lonesome isle of the Pacific, which was so far out of the usual track of trading vessels that there was little chance of its being visited, unless a ship should happen to be driven out of its course as the Vulture had been.
The island was certainly not a large one, probably only about five miles in any one direction, very irregular and wooded in parts. Although the sea was swarming with sharks, there were no wild beasts in it larger than a species of rock-rabbit, but turtles abounded, and there were thousands of wild-fowl. Bar an accident to their magazine, there was but little danger of their being starved, and the ship was now dry and trustworthy, being no longer strained and buffeted by the waves.
But oh! the lonesomeness of the situation; for they were afraid even to put out a little way to sea in the canoes, lest their position should be discovered.
When a whole fortnight passed away and absolutely nothing occurred, except one tropical storm, which served to break the monotony, all agreed that the life was becoming unbearable. The giant became morose, Willie looked as sad as if he had been heat-struck, and would sit forward in the fo’c’sle for two hours at a time silently gazing into the water. Even Peggy lost heart and seldom touched her mandoline. And Johnnie, who was evidently forcing himself to keep up his spirits, tried in vain to rouse Peggy from her lethargy. Ralph would get up often and stretch himself and yawn, but he had no heart to romp. He would walk over to Peggy, and placing his great head in her lap, look up in her face with his beautiful, beseeching eyes, as much as to say: “Dear little mistress, how long is this going to last? When are we going back to the wild woods, the tent, and the little caravan?” The child believed she knew what he was thinking about, and as she bent down to kiss his noble brow, her eyes were wet with tears.
“And is this to be the end of all my ambition?” thought Fitzroy. “Are we never to reach Australia, the land of all my hopes?”
“I tell you what it is, Stransom,” he said one day to the skipper, “something has got to be done, else I shall go out of my mind.”
As the skipper made no reply—