Concerning "Bully" Hayes

A bullet through his head soon finished him, and then began the chase after the young suckers, every one of which was caught. Small as they were, they fought and snapped and bit viciously, and acted generally like little fiends. As for the old sow, she was killed by the dogs; she was very poor and mangy, but the suckers were as round as balls.

Slinging the huge carcase of the boar from a stout pole, we returned to the village at nightfall. On the way down my two young half-caste friends told me that it is a habit peculiar to the wild sows of Strong's Island, when rearing their young, to flee to the lair of the boar when alarmed, and that sometimes the boar will kill every one of her young when harassed by dogs, and then, bursting through them, leave his partner to her fate.

Month after month passed away in the quiet little village of Leassé without the writer seeing anything of his former shipmates in the Leonora. Sometimes Hayes's boats would come to within a mile or so of the entrance to Coquille Harbour in their quests for coco-nuts, but, fortunately for the peace of the villagers, their crews never ventured so far as the village itself. Perhaps, indeed, they did not know where it was, for the high-peaked, saddle-backed houses were embowered in a thick grove of breadfruit and durian-trees about half a mile from the beach; and only the white curling smoke arising from the fires as the women cooked the morning and evening meals would have revealed its presence.

One peaceful, monotonously happy day followed another till at last, in the first flush of one bright tropic sunrise, a stately British man-of-war rounded the north end of the island, and furling her snow-white canvas—for she made the land under sail—steamed into Lelé Harbour. And the next day Hayes fled from the island in an open boat, and I, with three others of the Leonora's company, saw from the decks of the corvette the blue peaks of Kusaie sink into the sea.