have them. Please tell Leger and Mataiasi to catch them at once."

Then Mrs. MacLaggan went away, and Tom and O'Brien went down to the
jetty to wait for a boat to take them on board--Tom to his duty, and
O'Brien because he was thirsty again. Presently Leger and Mataiasi and a
large concourse of native children came down, carrying two female goats,
who, imagining they were to be cast into the sea, began to cry with
great violence, and were immediately answered in a deep voice by Billy
MacLaggan from over the water, whereupon Leger started to run off and
tell Mrs. MacLaggan that Billy was alive, and on board the _Rona_, and
Denison put out his foot and tripped him, and was at once assailed by
Leger's black wife, who hit him on the head with a stick, and then
herself was pushed backwards off the jetty into the water by Mr.
O'Brien, taking several children and one of the goats with her, and in
less than two minutes there was as pretty a fight as ever was seen.
Several native police ran to help their superior officer, and a lot of
dogs came with them; the dogs bit anybody and everybody
indiscriminately, but most of them went for Leger and Denison, who were
lying gasping together on the jetty, striving to murder each other; then
a number of sailors belonging to a whaleship joined in, and tried to
massacre or otherwise injure and generally maltreat the policemen, and
by the time the boat from the _Rona_ came to the rescue the jetty looked
like a battlefield, and one goat was drowned, and the new supercargo was
taken on board to have his excoriations attended to, for he was in a
very bad state.

That is the end of the story, which I have told in a confused sort of
away, I admit, because there are so many things in it, though I could
tell a lot more about the adventures of Billy MacLaggan, after he went
to sea with Captain Bully Hayes.