Adventures in Southern Seas A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

would not be taken alive. Moira, however, did not believe that we would be followed. Her people, she told me, were afraid to enter the forest at night, when evil spirits were

he trees which were visible to Moira, though I could not see them, which caused her such terror that I was obliged almost to carry her, and I someti

in fountains of spray. The sky was dull and overcast, which betokened a storm. A number of white birds with yellow crests, such as I had seen on my first landing, flew inland, and several fur-coated animals,

re we found a cave in which to shelter from the storm which now burst upon us. For an hour or more the elements raged with a fury only to be equalled in the tropics. Lightning flashed and thun

. Moira collected a quantity of shellfish, for the cooking of which I made a fire of some dried wood. Moira showed the greatest astonishment and some alarm at my flint and steel, which I now used for the first time in her p

highest part of the cliff above our cave, to be fired in case of sighting a ship, and every morning, with the dawn, I mounted to this look-out to scan the horizon

which to cook our food. Next she plaited fishing lines from grass-tree fibre, and fashioned hooks from the bones of slaughtered birds and animals, to catch the fish which abounded near the rocks. With the aid of my Sailor's knife she made a bow and arrows to shoot the hopping animals, the flesh of which when roasted resembled venison, while their fur-coated skins made us warm sleeping mats. She eve

ysteriously disappeared from a cave in which she kept a store of meat for our use, and she showed me where the rocks in front of this cave had been scraped of seaweed and mussel-shells as thoug

ich followed my selfishness it