Then I began to think of my mother and father, how I should have failed in helping them; and I remember thinking what a good job it was that my mother would never know exactly what had happened to me. Better the long anxiety, I thought, of watching and waiting for my return than to know I had been killed like this.

“But I’m not killed yet,” I thought, as the blood flushed to my face. “I’ll have a run for it, if I can.”

I had not much time given me to think, for I was dragged to my feet, and out into a large open place where there were huts and trees, and there before me lay the sea with our schooner, but the other was gone; and as I recalled the fire of the previous night I knew that she must have been burned to the water’s edge and then sunk.

I began wondering about what must have been the fate of the other schooner’s crew, and somehow it seemed that they deserved it. Then I began thinking of my own friends, and then, very selfishly no doubt, about myself.

But I had little time for thought, being hurried along and placed in the middle of a crowd of the savages, all of whom seemed to be rolling their eyes and looking at me as if enjoying my position.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “it is enough to scare anybody; but I’ll try and let them see that I belong to a superior race, and will not show what I feel.”

My eyes kept wandering about eagerly, first to look where my companions were placed, but as I saw no sign of them I began to hope that they might have escaped; s