“What are you going to do?” asked Tempest. “Make a noise like a sweet potato and bang ’em on the head while they’re standing still trying to scent it?” Jim did not deign to make any reply, but occupied himself during the greater part of the next few days in making a number of strong nets from twine, each about five feet square, with small lengths of twine attached to the corners. While this operation was in progress the other two, considerably mystified, submitted the Kanaka to good natured joking. “I know,” said Dave, “he’s going to fish for them.” “Great,” commented Tempest. “I hear that pig fishing is one of the chief sports in the Sandwich Islands. What do you use for bait, Jim?” Jim, however, worked on stolidly, finally surveying the crude nets he had constructed, with much satisfaction. “Now I show you how to catch um li’le pig,” he observed with a grim smile. With an ax he cut three formidable looking clubs from a tree, and then leading the way to a clump of bushes some distance from their camp he tied the nets loosely across the entrances to the various runways. “Lie still,” he ordered. “Bimeby we hear him say ‘grump-grump’ maybe p’raps.” Each holding one of the murderous clubs, they squatted on the ground. There seemed to be perfect stillness, such as one can find on an isle in the Pacific on a calm day. Not even the soft soothing sound of a ripple on the sea shore reached them. Once or twice the melancholy call of a distant gull reached their ears, otherwise they were in a soundless world. Suddenly the Kanaka raised a warning finger. The porker had betrayed its presence to him, though neither of the other two had detected it. He motioned Tempest and Dave to the place where the animal was most likely to break away. Once he saw they were ready at their stations he went round to the other side of the bushes and set up an unearthly din that was calculated to drive any self-respecting hog out of its senses. Yelling himself hoarse, and beating on the tangled branches like a mad thing with his club, he kept up a running fire of warning to the others, sometimes lapsing into a heathenish tongue in his excitement. At last, without the slightest warning, an alarmed pig, squealing as though a pack of hounds were at its trotters, bolted at full gallop. Full tilt it went at a net near which the boy and his companion were waiting in breathless suspense. The net came away from its moorings, as Jim had intended it to, with one or more of the porker’s legs hopelessly entangled in the meshes; and there ascended heavenwards a squealing the like of which had probably never been heard on the island. Over and over the pig rolled, struggling frantically to free itself. Both Dave and Tempest were rushing towards it, with clubs upraised, when confusion was added to the situation by another pig bolting into a second net.