“It’s Jack Fuller, no doubt, your honour; I sent him up to clear away the branches from the main topmast rigging.”  Then raising his head, and elevating his voice, “Hilloa! aloft there!”

The only answer was a groan, followed by a deeper commotion among the rustling foliage.

“Why, what the devil’s the matter with you now, Jack?” pursued the boatswain, in a voice of angry vehemence.  “Are ye scared at another ghost, and be damned to you, that ye keep groaning there after that fashion?”

At that moment a heavy dull mass was heard tumbling through the upper rigging of the schooner towards the deck, and presently a human form fell at the very feet of the small group, composed of the two officers and the individual who had last spoken.

“A light, a light!” shouted the boatswain; “the foolish chap has lost his hold through fear, and ten to one if he hasn’t cracked his skull-piece for his pains.  Quick there with a light, and let’s see what we can do for him.”

The attention of all had been arrested by the sound of the falling weight, and as one of the sailors now advanced, bearing a dark lantern from below, the whole of the crew, with the exception of those employed on the fallen tree, gathered themselves in a knot round the motionless form of the prostrate man.  But no sooner had their eyes encountered the object of their interest, when each individual started suddenly and involuntarily back, baring his cutlass, and drawing forth his pistol, the whole presenting a group of countenances strongly marked by various shades of consternation and alarm, even while their attitudes were those of men prepared for some fierce and desperate danger.  It was indeed Fuller whom they had beheld, but not labouring, as the boatswain had imagined, under the mere influence of superstitious fear.  He was dead, and the blood flowing from a deep wound, inflicted by a sharp instrument in his chest, and the scalped head, too plainly told the manner of his death, and the danger that awaited them all.

A pause ensued, but it was short.  Before any one could find words to remark on the horrible circumstance, the appalling war-cry of the savages burst loudly from every quarter upon the ears of the devoted crew.  In the desperation of the moment, several of the men clutched their cutlasses between their teeth, and seizing the concealed matches, rushed to their respective stations at the guns.  It was in vain the boatswain called out to them, in a voice of stern authority, to desist, intimating that their only protection lay in the reservation of the fire of their batteries.  Goaded and excited, beyond the power of resistance, to an impulse that set all subordination at defiance, they applied the matches, and almost at the same instant the terrific discharge of both broadsides took place, rocking the vessel to the water’s edge, and reverberating, throughout, the confined space in which she lay, like the deadly explosion of some deeply excavated mine.