Shall it be whispered that I regretted his belligerency?  Here, in truth, was the drama staged,—­my drama, had I only been able to realize it.  The good ship beached, the headhunters hemming us in on all sides, the scene prepared for one of those struggles against frightful odds which I had so graphically related as an essential part of our adventures.

“Let’s roll the cuss in the fancy collar,” proposed one of the head-hunters,—­meaning me.

“I’ll stove yer slats if yer touch him,” said Grits, and then resorted to appeal.  “I s’y, carn’t yer stand back and let a chap ’ave a charnst?”

The head-hunters only jeered.  And what shall be said of the Captain in this moment of peril?  Shall it be told that his heart was beating wildly?—­bumping were a better word.  He was trying to remember that he was the Captain.  Otherwise, he must admit with shame that he, too, should have fled.  So much for romance when the test comes.  Will he remain to fall fighting for his ship?  Like Horatius, he glanced up at the hill, where, instead of the porch of the home where he would fain have been, he beheld a wisp of a girl standing alone, her hat on the back of her head, her hair flying in the wind, gazing intently down at him in his danger.  The renegade crew was nowhere to be seen.  There are those who demand the presence of a woman in order to be heroes....

“Give us a chance, can’t you?” he cried, repeating Grits’s appeal in not quite such a stentorian tone as he would have liked, while his hand trembled on the gunwale.  Tom Peters, it must be acknowledged, was much more of a buccaneer when it was a question of deeds, for he planted himself in the way of the belligerent chief of the head-hunters (who spoke with a decided brogue).

“Get out of the way!” said Tom, with a little squeak in his voice.  Yet there he was, and he deserves a tribute.

An unlooked-for diversion saved us from annihilation, in the shape of one who had a talent for creating them.  We were bewilderingly aware of a girlish figure amongst us.

“You cowards!” she cried.  “You cowards!”

Lithe, and fairly quivering with passion, it was Nancy who showed us how to face the head-hunters.  They gave back.  They would have been brave indeed if they had not retreated before such an intense little nucleus of energy and indignation!...

“Ah, give ’em a chanst,” said their chief, after a moment....  He even helped to push the boat towards the water.  But he did not volunteer to be one of those to man the Petrel on her maiden voyage.  Nor did Logan’s pond, that wild March day, greatly resemble the South Seas.  Nevertheless, my eye on Nancy, I stepped proudly aboard and seized an “oar.”  Grits and Tom followed,—­when suddenly the Petrel sank considerably below the water-line as her builders had estimated it.  Ere we fully realized this, the now friendly head-hunters had given us a shove, and we were off!  The Captain, who