A coral rock jutted high out of the sea to the left hard by.  Its summit was crowded with a basking population of sea-gulls and pelicans.  The captain gave the word to “easy all.”  In a second the gig stopped short, as those stout arms held her.  He rose in his place and lifted the six-shooter.  Then he pointed it ostentatiously at the rock, away from the native canoes, and held up his hand yet again for silence.  “We’ll give ’em a taste of what we can do, boys,” he said, “just to show ’em, not to hurt ’em.”  At that he drew the trigger twice.  His first two chambers were loaded on purpose with duck-shot cartridges.  Twice the big gun roared; twice the fire flashed red from its smoking mouth.  As the smoke cleared away, the natives, dumb with surprise, and perfectly cowed with terror, saw ten or a dozen torn and bleeding birds float mangled upon the water.

“Now for the dynamite!” the captain said, cheerily, proceeding to lower a small object overboard by a single wire, while he held up his hand a third time to bespeak silence and attention.

The natives looked again, with eyes starting from their heads.  The captain gave a little click, and pointed with his finger to a spot on the water’s top, a little way in front of him.  Instantly, a loud report, and a column of water spurted up into the air, some ten or twelve feet, in a boisterous fountain.  As it subsided again, a hundred or so of the bright-colored fish that browse among the submerged, coral-groves of these still lagoons, rose dead or dying to the seething, boiling surface.

The captain smiled.  Instantly the natives set up a terrified shout.  “It is even as he said,” they cried.  “These gods are his ministers!  The white-faced Korong is a very great deity!  He is indeed the true Tu-Kila-Kila.  These gods have come for him.  They are very mighty.  Thunder and lightning and waterspouts are theirs.  The waves do as they bid.  The sea obeys them.  They are here to take away our Tu-Kila-Kila from our midst.  And what will then become of the island of Boupari?  Will it not sink in the waves of the sea and disappear?  Will not the sun in heaven grow dark, and the moon cease to shed its benign light on the earth, when Tu-Kila-Kila the Great returns at last to his own far country?”

“That lot’ll do for ’em, I expect,” the captain said cheerily, with a confident smile.  “Now forward all, boys.  I fancy we’ve astonished the natives a trifle.”

They rowed on steadily, but cautiously, toward the white bank of sand which formed the usual landing-place, the captain holding the six-shooter in readiness all the time, and keeping an eye firmly fixed on every movement of the savages.  But the warriors in the canoes, thoroughly cowed and overawed by this singular exhibition of the strangers’ prowess, paddled on in whispering silence, nearly abreast of the gig, but at a safe distance, as they thought, and eyed the advancing Europeans with quiet looks of unmixed suspicion.