But the young Frenchman, and his north Briton companion, had reserved to themselves means of increasing their consequence, still more than by their mere personal merits, with their new fellow-countrymen.  A few days after the wreck, the subsiding elements had cast up certain articles of the ship, which they managed to turn to good account:  the most valuable of them were fire-arms and some gunpowder, and a few other implements, both of defence, and use in household, or ship’s repairs.  The fire-arms seemed to endow the new young chief, just engrafted into the reigning stock, with a kind of preternatural authority; and, by the aid of his old messmate, and new bosom-coadjutor, he exerted all his influence over their awed minds, to prevent their recurrence to the frightful practice he had seen on his first landing, of devouring the prisoners they took in war.  His marriage had invested him with the power of a natively born son of the king; and, having made himself master of their language, his persuasions were so conclusive with the leading warriors, that, in the course of a very little time, it was rare to hear that so dreadful a species of vengeance was ever tasted, even in stealth.  However, so addicted were some few of the fiercer sort, to this ancient triumph of their ancestors, that he found it necessary to add commands to persuasions, and then threats to commands; and having expressed in the strongest terms his abhorrence of so cowardly and brutal a practice, he told them, that the first man he saw attempt to touch the flesh of a prisoner to devour it, he would instantly put the offender to death.

Shortly after this warning, a fray took place between the natives of his father-in-law’s dominions, and their enemies from a hostile island.  A number of captives were taken; and all under his command held his former orders in such reverence, that none, excepting two (and they had before shown refractory dispositions,) presumed to disobey his edict of mercy.  But these men, in derision of his lenity, particularly to the female sex, selected a woman prisoner to be their victim; and slaying her, as they would have done a beast, they commenced their horrible repast upon her body.  Laonce descried the scene at a distance just as they had prepared their hideous banquet, and, going resolutely towards them, levelled his musket at the cannibals.  One of the wretches was killed with the horrid morsel in his mouth, and a second shot, brought down his voracious accomplice in the act.  This bold example so awed all within ken of the fact, that from that hour, until the day he quitted the island, a period of fourteen years, no captive ever met with the interdicted fate.  Though the old sovereign continued in life, he consigned the power to his new son, and Laonce became virtually king of the place.  Indeed, so reconciled was he and his friend the north Briton (who also married) to the spot which had first sheltered them, and then adopted them even as its legitimate offspring, that although