“How are we going to live on the island?” asked Bickley.

“I don’t know,” I replied; “but I am quite certain that if we stay here we shall die.”

“Very well,” he said; “let us try it.”

While we were speaking I was cutting Bastin’s bonds.  “Thank you,” he said.  “It is a great relief to stretch one’s arms after they have been compressed with cords.  But at the same time, I do not know that I am really grateful.  The martyr’s crown was hanging above me, so to speak, and now it has vanished into the pit, like that man whom Bickley murdered.”

“Look here,” exclaimed the exasperated Bickley, “if you say much more, Bastin, I’ll chuck you into the pit too, to look for your martyr’s crown, for I think you have done enough mischief for one morning.”

“If you are trying to shift the responsibility for that unfortunate man’s destruction on to me—­”

“Oh! shut it and trot,” broke in Bickley.  “Those infernal savages are coming with your blessed converts leading the van.”

So we “trotted” at no mean pace.  As we passed it, Bastin stooped down and picked up the head of the image of Oro, much as Atalanta in Academy pictures is represented as doing to the apples, and bore it away in triumph.

“I know it is scorched,” he ejaculated at intervals, “but they might trim it up and stick it on to a new body as the original false god.  Now they can’t, for there’s nothing left.”

As a matter of fact, we were never in any real danger, for our pursuit was very half-hearted indeed.  To begin with, now that their first rage was over, the Orofenans who were fond of us had no particular wish to do us to death, while the ardour of their sorcerers, who wished this very much, had been greatly cooled by the mysterious annihilation of their idol and the violent deaths of two of their companions, which they thought might be reduplicated in their own persons.  So it came about that the chase, if noisy, was neither close nor eager.

We reached the edge of the lake where was the boat-house of which I have spoken already, travelling at little more than a walk.  Here we made Bastin unfasten the better of the two canoes that by good luck was almost filled with offerings, which doubtless, according to custom, must be made upon the day of this feast to Oro, while we watched against surprise at the boat-house door.  When he was ready we slipped in and took our seats, Tommy jumping in after us, and pushed the canoe, now very heavily laden, out into the lake.

Here, at a distance of about forty paces, which we judged to be beyond wooden spear-throw, we rested upon our paddles to see what would happen.  All the crowd of islanders had rushed to the lake edge where they stood staring at us stupidly.  Bastin, thinking the occasion opportune, lifted the hideous head of the idol which he had carefully washed, and began to preach on the downfall of “the god of the Grove.”