"Sure," responded the commodore. "We'll need 'em for hostages if we're to get that black coral. We'll turn 'em over to McGuffey." * * * * * "I'd better ease up a minute, sir," said the mate to Mr. McGuffey. "The gun's getting fearful hot." "Let her melt," raved McGuffey, "but keep her workin' for all she's worth. I'll have revenge for Gib's death, or--_sufferin' mackerel!_" McGuffey once more sat down on the cabin ventilator. He pointed dumbly to the beach, and there, paddling off to the _Maggie II_, were two naked cannibals and two naked white men in a canoe. Five minutes later they came alongside. McGuffey met them at the rail, and he smiled and licked his lower lip as the trembling monarch and his prime minister, in response to a severe application of Mr. Gibney's hands and feet, came flying over the rail. Mr. Gibney and Captain Scraggs followed. "I'm much obliged to you, Mac," said Mr. Gibney, striving bravely to appear jaunty. "One of your first shots came between my legs and cut the rope that held me, and banged me and the post I was tied to all over the lot. A fragment of the shell appears to have taken away part of my ear, but I guess I'll recover. We're pretty well shook up, Mac, old socks, and a jolt of whisky would be in order after you've put the irons on these two cannibals." "You're two nice bloody-lookin' villains, ain't you?" was McGuffey's comment, as he surveyed the late arrivals. "Which two do you mean?" inquired Mr. Gibney, with a touch of asperity in his tones. "I dunno," replied McGuffey. "It's pretty hard to distinguish between niggers and folks that goes to work an' eats with 'em." "Mac," said Captain Scraggs severely, "you're prejudiced." CHAPTER XXV At 6:30 o'clock of the morning of the day following the frightful experience of Commodore Gibney and Captain Scraggs with the cannibals of Kandavu, the members of the _Maggie II_ Syndicate faced each other across the breakfast table with appetites in no wise diminished by the exciting events of the preceding day. Captain Scraggs appeared with a lump on the back of his head as big as a goose egg. The doughty commodore had a cut over his right eye, and the top of his sinful head was so sore, where the earthenware pot had struck him, that even the simple operation of winking his bloodshot eyes was productive of pain. About a teaspoonful of Kandavu real estate had also been blown into Mr. Gibney's classic features when the shells from the Maxim-Vickers gun exploded in his immediate neighbourhood, and as he naively remarked to Bartholomew McGuffey, he was in luck to be alive.