While the pioneers at the Old Port were on the verge of starvation, the ‘Clonmel’ men were living in luxury.  They had all the blessings both of land and sea—­corned beef, salt pork, potatoes, plum-duff, tea, sugar, coffee, wine, beer, spirits, and tobacco from the cargo of the ‘Clonmel’, and oysters without end from a neighbouring lagoon.  They constructed a large square punt, which they filled with cargo daily, wind and weather permitting; at other times they rested from their labours, or roamed about the island shooting birds or hunting kangaroo.  They saw no other inhabitants, and believed that no black lucifer had as yet entered their island garden; but, though unseen, he was watching them and all their works.

One morning the wreckers had gone to the wreck; a man named Kennedy was left in charge of the camp; Sambo, the black cook, was attending to his duties at the fire; and Mrs. Kennedy, the only lady of the party, was at the water hole washing clothes.  Her husband had left the camp with his gun in the hope of shooting some wattle birds, which were then fat with feeding on the sweet blossoms of the honeysuckle.  He was sitting on a log near the water-hole talking to his wife, who had just laid out to dry on the bushes three coloured shirts and a lilac dress.  She stood with her hands on her hips, pensively contemplating the garments.  She had her troubles, and was turning them over in her mind, while her husband was thinking of something else quite different.  It is, I believe, a thing that often happens.

“I am thinking, Flora,” he said, “that this would be a grand island to live on—­far better than Skye, because it has no rocks on it.  I would like to haf it for a station.  I could put sheep and cattle on it, and they could not go away nor be lifted, because there is deep water all round it; and we would haf plenty of beef, and mutton, and wool, and game, and fish, and oysters.  We could make a garden and haf plenty of kail, and potatoes, and apples.”

“It’s all ferry well, Donald,” she replied, “for you to be talking about sheep, and cattle, and apples; but I’d like to know wherefer we would be getting the money to buy the sheep and cattle?  And who would like to live here for efer a thousand miles from decent neebors?  And that’s my best goon, and it’s getting fery shabby; and wherefer I’m to get another goon in a country like this I’m thinking I don’t know.”

Donald thought his wife was troubling herself about mere trifles, but before he had time to say so, a blackfellow snatched his gun from across his knees, another hit him on the head with a waddy, and a third did the same to Flora and the unfortunate couple lay senseless on the ground.  Their hopes and troubles had come to a sudden end.

This onslaught had been made by four blacks, who now made a bundle of the clothes, and carried them and the gun away, going towards the camp in search of more plunder.  The tents occupied by the wreckers had been enclosed in a thick hedge of scrub to protect them from the drifting sand.  There was only one opening in the hedge, through which the blacks could see Sambo cooking the wreckers’ dinner before a fire.  His head was bare, and he was enjoying the genial heat of early summer, singing snatches of the melodies of Old Virginny.