The answer to this was a simultaneous salute from all the fragments of the broken oars, one of which, despite his adroitness, gave the little man a very tolerable thwack across the shoulders, upon which, not choosing to risk the consequences of another broadside, the dwarf called out— ‘Good night; you had better pull to the schooner if you don’t want to sleep among the noddies and the boobies. Ho! ho!—good night.’ He then coolly paddled off, whistling. To have attempted to follow him would be sheer nonsense. We had our wings, as it were, clipped, and if we could not catch the canoe with four fresh men and four oars, there was little chance of overhauling him with four wearied men and two oars, so we addressed ourselves to get back to the schooner. The chase had lasted nearly an hour, and upon looking around we saw the mast of the ‘Will o’ the Wisp’ at a distance which somewhat startled us. There was a flag flying at her main-topmast-head which we supposed was a signal of recall. We therefore began to retrace our course, manning the remaining oars double. ‘I hope we may make the schooner, Will Thistle,’ said Edward Lanscriffe, one of the boat’s crew. ‘So do I,’ said Paul Williamson, who tugged at the same oar with him; ‘it would be ill sleeping among desert rocks and sands, and them haunted too.’ ‘Haunted?’ said I, ‘what do you mean? Haunted by whom?’ ‘By whom but the dwarf who paddled that canoe,’ answered the bowman, a sailor from Penzance. ‘Why,’ quoth I, ‘do you think he is anything but a man like ourselves—only, perhaps, for the matter of that, a trifle shorter?’ All the men shook their heads gloomily, and one of them replied— ‘No, no; it is no mortal that lives alone amongst these reefs, and refused the help of Christian men to carry him away from the middle of the sea.’ ‘That is over true,’ quoth Paul Williamson, ‘and greatly do I fear that his coming boded no good to ship or crew. He ought not to have been allowed on board.’