It was but for a little while that the flames ran round the dry, thin walls and mounted the wooden spire, and rose, a column of clear, pale scarlet against the brilliant green of the tall Bread-fruit trees. Those within the church saw that there was no escape, and the youngest of the Priests, a boyish fellow who in England had thought much about stoles and albs, quietly gave out the hymn they had meant to sing at the end of the service. All joined with one voice, and only as the flames wrapped round and choked them the sound of their singing died away—no groan, no cry for help, no struggle to escape, but just one solemn, triumphant martyr song, and all was still. The old Scholar died on the steps of the altar, as they knew by his signet ring, an antique of great beauty, on which was engraved the figure of a man bound by his outstretched hands and feet, supposed to represent Prometheus chained upon the rock. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER III. “This is the righteous maid, the comforter.” Thus ended the hopes of the West. The time that followed was one of wild confusion. Violence was the only law, and those who escaped in that terrible day yielded themselves in hopeless misery to the disorders they could not avert or control. Some few there always were who longed for order and peace, and mourned in silence for their lost leaders; but none had the courage to speak out. It was in these days that a ship of strange appearance was seen approaching the entrance of the Lagoon, which, passing quickly round to the north of the Island, a bare, rocky region not yet inhabited, landed there a large number of passengers, and before the rest of the inhabitants could cross the mountain and discover who were the new-comers, the ship which brought them had vanished again into the open sea. A stealthy departure and scarcely to be wondered at, for the government of Burmah had grave fears whether even on the Island of Outlaws its passengers could be welcomed or endured. They were a large company of an entirely lawless robber race known at that time by the name of Dacoits—the terror of the Burmese country. These men soon found that they had been put ashore on the least fertile part of the Island, and they began to come over the heights and plunder the older settlers for whatever they needed, even driving them from their homes and taking possession of these.