last they were seen approaching along the shore from the south. At
the first alarm all the ship-wrecked people ran to the barricade for
shelter, and the men armed themselves with anything in the shape of
weapons they could find. But their main hope of victory was the
musket. They could not expect to kill many cannibals with one shot,
but the flash and report would be sure to strike them with terror,
and put them to flight.

By this time their diet of shellfish had left them all weak and
emaciated, skeletons only just alive; the anthropophagi would have
nothing but bones to pick; still, the little life left in them was
precious, and they resolved to sell it as dear as they could. They
watched the savages approaching; at length they could count their
number. They were only eleven all told, and were advancing slowly.
Now they saw that seven of the eleven were small, only picaninnies.
When they came nearer three out of the other four were seen to be
lubras, and the eleventh individual then resolved himself into a
white savage, who roared out, "Mates ahoy!"

The white man was Scott, the sealer, who had taken up is abode on the
island with his harem, three Tasmanian gins and seven children.

They were the only permanent inhabitants; the cannibal blacks had
disappeared, and continued to exist only in the fancies of the
mariners. Scott's residence was opposite New Year's Island not far
from the shore; there he had built a hut and planted a garden with
potatoes and other vegetables. Flesh meat he obtained from the
kangaroos and seals. Their skins he took to Launceston in his boat,
and in it he brought back supplies of flour and groceries. He had
observed dead bodies of women and men, and pieces of a wrecked vessel