conversation, I agreed to become one of the crew, at least until we
could reach some civilized island where I might be put ashore. The
captain assented to this proposition, and after thanking him for
the promise, I left the cabin and went on deck with feelings that
ought to have been lighter, but which were, I could not tell why,
marvellously heavy and uncomfortable still.



CHAPTER XXIII.



Bloody Bill - Dark surmises - A strange sail, and a strange crew,
and a still stranger cargo - New reasons for favouring missionaries
- A murderous massacre, and thoughts thereon.


THREE weeks after the conversation narrated in the last chapter, I
was standing on the quarter-deck of the schooner watching the
gambols of a shoal of porpoises that swam round us. It was a dead
calm. One of those still, hot, sweltering days, so common in the
Pacific, when Nature seems to have gone to sleep, and the only
thing in water or in air that proves her still alive, is her long,
deep breathing, in the swell of the mighty sea. No cloud floated
in the deep blue above; no ripple broke the reflected blue below.
The sun shone fiercely in the sky, and a ball of fire blazed, with
almost equal power, from out the bosom of the water. So intensely
still was it, and so perfectly transparent was the surface of the
deep, that had it not been for the long swell already alluded to,