Steven on their way to the mainland for schooling. All were
supposed to have perished in a squall. A year later, the captain
of the Julia, coasting along the island variously called Bligh,
Lagoon, and Tematangi saw armed natives follow the course of his
schooner, clad in many-coloured stuffs. Suspicion was at once
aroused; the mother of the lost children was profuse of money; and
one expedition having found the place deserted, and returned
content with firing a few shots, she raised and herself accompanied
another. None appeared to greet or to oppose them; they roamed a
while among abandoned huts and empty thickets; then formed two
parties and set forth to beat, from end to end, the pandanus jungle
of the island. One man remained alone by the landing-place--Teina,
a chief of Anaa, leader of the armed natives who made the strength
of the expedition. Now that his comrades were departed this way
and that, on their laborious exploration, the silence fell
profound; and this silence was the ruin of the islanders. A sound
of stones rattling caught the ear of Teina. He looked, thinking to
perceive a crab, and saw instead the brown hand of a human being
issue from a fissure in the ground. A shout recalled the search
parties and announced their doom to the buried caitiffs. In the
cave below, sixteen were found crouching among human bones and
singular and horrid curiosities. One was a head of golden hair,
supposed to be a relic of the captain's wife; another was half of
the body of a European child, sun-dried and stuck upon a stick,
doubtless with some design of wizardry.

The Paumotuan is eager to be rich. He saves, grudges, buries
money, fears not work. For a dollar each, two natives passed the
hours of daylight cleaning our ship's copper. It was strange to
see them so indefatigable and so much at ease in the water--working