We at once set about making a torch, and finding that we had a difficulty in getting the kernels entire out of the shells, which were very hard, we thought of boiling them, and then found that the shells cracked with the slightest tap, so that the kernels came out whole. When we had some twenty of these kernels we skewered them together on a thin, hard stick, and so had a torch, and there being now no obstacle to the trick I purposed playing on the dogs, we took one of our pigs into the house, and surrounded the other with a kind of stout stockade inside the sty, and at nightfall we left the gate of the sty open, but contrived that we could easily close it by means of a rope which we carried into our house. We did not go to bed, but waited, holding our torch ready, with flint and tinder, and also a couple of the spears I have before mentioned, which, although rude weapons, were the fittest for the work in hand. It was not long before we heard the light patter of feet, and soon after the squealing of our decoy. We waited a little, so as to give our expected guests plenty of time to establish themselves, knowing too that they would not be able to do any harm to the pig, and then we pulled the rope, so closing the gate upon the intruders. Then I kindled the torch, and holding it aloft in my left hand, I rushed out with a spear in my right hand, and Billy armed in like manner. The sty was a good way from the house, and before we got to it the dogs that were outside, alarmed by the unwonted glare and by our shouts, scampered away into the darkness, leaving their comrades howling and yelping in the sty, and the pig squealing too in a terrible fright. Having the prisoners now at our mercy, for they could not leap the walls of the sty, we doomed them to instant execution, and when some of them fled for refuge into the covered part of the sty, we took off a portion of the roof, and so fell on them again, and did not desist until we had killed every one. We left them there until the morning, and then carried them forth, nine in all, and Billy insisted on skinning them, saying that their coats would make fine mats for our house-floor, which indeed they did when they had been well washed in lake-water and dried in the open air. The vengeance we took had an excellent deterrent effect on the rest of the pack, which no more molested us, at least in that part of the island. We caught more fowls to replace those that had been stolen, and captured the litter of another sow, which we killed for food, and were happy in the thought that by natural increase our fowls and pigs would in course of time provide us with as much food as we needed, or even more. We kept the hides of those we killed, though we had no immediate use for them. Billy said he wished he could make a pair of boots, for the rough ground was very troublesome to his bare feet, and my boots were very much worn and, indeed, scarcely held together. But we knew nothing of