The scattered paths of the different boys, where they broke back after the disastrous attempt to rush the Tahitian, soon led together.  They traced it to the Berande, which the runaways had crossed with the clear intention of burying themselves in the huge mangrove swamp that lay beyond.

“There is no use our going any farther,” Sheldon said.  “Seelee will turn out his village and hunt them out of that.  They’ll never get past him.  All we can do is to guard the coast and keep them from breaking back on the plantation and running amuck.  Ah, I thought so.”

Against the jungle gloom of the farther shore, coming from down stream, a small canoe glided.  So silently did it move that it was more like an apparition.  Three naked blacks dipped with noiseless paddles.  Long-hafted, slender, bone-barbed throwing-spears lay along the gunwale of the canoe, while a quiverful of arrows hung on each man’s back.  The eyes of the man-hunters missed nothing.  They had seen Sheldon and Joan first, but they gave no sign.  Where Gogoomy and his followers had emerged from the river, the canoe abruptly stopped, then turned and disappeared into the deeper mangrove gloom.  A second and a third canoe came around the bend from below, glided ghostlike to the crossing of the runaways, and vanished in the mangroves.

“I hope there won’t be any more killing,” Joan said, as they turned their horses homeward.

“I don’t think so,” Sheldon assured her.  “My understanding with old Seelee is that he is paid only for live boys; so he is very careful.”

CHAPTER XXIII—­A MESSAGE FROM THE BUSH

Never had runaways from Berande been more zealously hunted.  The deeds of Gogoomy and his fellows had been a bad example for the one hundred and fifty new recruits.  Murder had been planned, a gang-boss had been killed, and the murderers had broken their contracts by fleeing to the bush.  Sheldon saw how imperative it was to teach his new-caught cannibals that bad examples were disastrous things to pattern after, and he urged Seelee on night and day, while with the Tahitians he practically lived in the bush, leaving Joan in charge of the plantation.  To the north Boucher did good work, twice turning the fugitives back when they attempted to gain the coast.

One by one the boys were captured.  In the first man-drive through the mangrove swamp Seelee caught two.  Circling around to the north, a third was wounded in the thigh by Boucher, and this one, dragging behind in the chase, was later gathered in by Seelee’s hunters.  The three captives, heavily ironed, were exposed each day in the compound, as good examples of what happened to bad examples, all for the edification of the seven score and ten half-wild Poonga-Poonga men.  Then the Minerva, running past for Tulagi, was signalled to send a boat, and the three prisoners were carried away to prison to await trial.