“To-morrow,” said Bickley.  “But learn that if you try to harm us we will bring another wave which will drown all your country.”

Nobody seemed to doubt our capacities in this direction, but one inquiring spirit in a wicker crate did ask how it came about that if we controlled the ocean we had arrived in half a canoe instead of a whole one.

Bickley replied to the effect that it was because the gods always travelled in half-canoes to show their higher nature, which seemed to satisfy everyone.  Then we announced that we had seen enough of them for that day and would retire to think.  Meanwhile we should be obliged if they would build us a house and keep us supplied with whatever food they had.

“Do the gods eat?” asked the sceptic again.

“That fellow is a confounded radical,” I whispered to Bickley.  “Tell him that they do when they come to Orofena.”

He did so, whereon the chief said: 

“Would the gods like a nice young girl cooked?”

At this point Bastin retired down the path, realising that he had to do with cannibals.  We said that we preferred to look at the girls alive and would meet them again to-morrow morning, when we hoped that the house would be ready.

So our first interview with the inhabitants of Orofena came to an end, on which we congratulated ourselves.

On reaching the remains of the Star of the South we set to work to take stock of what was left to us.  Fortunately it proved to be a very great deal.  As I think I mentioned, all the passenger part of the yacht lay forward of the bridge, just in front of which the vessel had been broken in two, almost as cleanly as though she were severed by a gigantic knife.  Further our stores were forward and practically everything else that belonged to us, even down to Bickley’s instruments and medicines and Bastin’s religious works, to say nothing of a great quantity of tinned food and groceries.  Lastly on the deck above the saloon had stood two large lifeboats.  Although these were amply secured at the commencement of the gale one of them, that on the port side, was smashed to smithers; probably some spar had fallen upon it.  The starboard boat, however, remained intact and so far as we could judge, seaworthy, although the bulwarks were broken by the waves.

“There’s something we can get away in if necessary,” I said.

“Where to?” remarked Bastin.  “We don’t know where we are or if there is any other land within a thousand miles.  I think we had better stop here as Providence seems to have intended, especially when there is so much work to my hand.”

“Be careful,” answered Bickley, “that the work to your hand does not end in the cutting of all our throats.  It is an awkward thing interfering with the religion of savages, and I believe that these untutored children of Nature sometimes eat missionaries.”

“Yes, I have heard that,” said Bastin; “they bake them first as they do pigs.  But I don’t know that they would care to eat me,” and he glanced at his bony limbs, “especially when you are much plumper.  Anyhow one can’t stop for a risk of that sort.”