“A little bit higher up, Docky Mason, 'Star' an' me, planted ourselves with our Winchesters, an' one of our boats' whaler's bomb guns, which fired four pounds of slugs and deer shot, mixed up—the sorter thing, boss, thet you an' me may find mighty handy here in this very place, if we get rushed sudden. We made a charcoal fire, and then frayed out the ends of the dynamite fuses so thet they would light quickly.
“When daylight came, we caught sight of nigh on fifty canoes, all crammed with niggers, paddlin' like blazes to where we was cached, but making no noise. Even if they hed we would not hev heard it, fur the wind and the surf beatin' on the reef would hev drowned it.
“On they came and rushed their canoes into the little cove, four abreast, and Tia prodded our buck in the back, and told him to stand up and talk to Baian, who was in one of the leadin' canoes.
“Up he jumps.
“'Oh, Baian, Baian, great Baian,' he called, 'the two white men are dead in their house, and we have the woman bound hand and foot.'
“'Good,' said Baian with a fat chuckle, as he put one leg over the gunwale of his canoe to step out, and the next moment I put a bullet through him, and then Docky Mason lit the first charge o' dynamite, and slings it down, right inter the middle of the crowded canoes, and before it went off he sent the second one after it.
“Boss, I hev seen some dynamite explosions in my time—especially when I hev hed to blow up wrecks—but I hev never seen anything like thet. The two shots killed over thirty niggers, wounded as many more, and stunned a lot, who were drowned. Those who were not hurt swam out of the cove, and neither Docky nor me had the heart to shoot any of 'em—though we might hev picked off a couple of dozen afore they got outer range.
“Before we could stop him our prisoner jumped down among the dead and wounded, got a long knife, an' in ten seconds he had Baian's' head off, and held it up to us, grinning like a cat, on'y not so nice, ez he hed jet black, betel-nut stained teeth, and red lips like a piece ev raw beef.
“We hed no more trouble with the niggers after thet turn-up, you can bet yer life.
“The buck stayed with us until the luggers came back, and a few days after we landed him at his own village—ez rich ez Jay Gould, for we gave him a musket with powder and ball, a cutlass, half a dozen pounds ev red beads, and two hundred sticks of terbacker. I guess thet thet nigger was able to buy himself all the wives he wanted, and be a 'big Injun' fur the end of his days.”