and would lay them down for him if he bade them do so." But I did
not think that my reign was so soon to come to an end. The next
thing for us to do was to give Carl and Jaf some food, and to
kill and roast a kid, to which we all four sat down, and I did my
best to cheer them.

Carl in a few days grew quite strong, and I set him to work to
dig some land for seed; for it was clear we should want more corn
now that we had two more mouths to fill. So we put in the ground
all the stock of grain I had, and thus we all four had as much
work as we could do for some time. When the crop grew, and was
ripe, we found we had a good store of grain.

We made a plan that Carl and Jaf should go back to the main land,
to try if they could get some of the white men who had been cast
on shore there, to come and live with us; so they got out the
boat, and took with them two guns and food for eight days. They
were to come back in a week's time, and I bade them hang out a
sign when they came in sight, so that we might know who they
were.

One day, Friday ran up to me in great glee, and said, "They are
back! They are back!" A mile from shore, there was a boat with a
sail, which stood in for the land; but I knew it could not be the
one which our two friends had gone out in, for it was on the
wrong side of the isle for that. I saw too, through my glass, a
ship out at sea. There were twelve men in the boat, three of whom
were bound in chains, and four had fire arms.

Bye and bye, I saw one of the men raise his sword to those who