Now in dead silence, all in the hut, brown men and white, pressed close around the melon-rind boat on the floor. So moving the melon seeds that it was obvious that the six men represented by six seeds were being driven overboard, Roger next set the boat on the floor and transferred them to it. Lining up all the rest along the side of the ship, he cried loudly, "Bang bang!" "Cook," he called, beckoning to black Frank, "come here!" As the negro reluctantly obeyed, Roger pointed to the long gash that Kipping's bullet had cut in his kinky scalp. Crying again, "Bang-bang!" he pointed at one of the seeds in the boat and then at the cook. Not one of them who could see the carved boats failed to understand what Roger meant, and the brown men looked at Frank and laughed and talked more loudly and excitedly than ever. Then the chief stood up and cried to some one in the farthest corner of the room, and at that there was more laughing and shouting. The man in the corner seemed much abashed; but those about him pushed him forward, and he was shoved along through the crowd until he, too, stood beside the table, where a dozen men pointed at his head and cried "Bang-bang!" or "Pom-pom!" as the case might be. To our amazement we saw that just over his right temple there was torn the path of a bullet, exactly that on the cook's head. [Illustration: He cut from the melon-rind a roughly shaped model of a ship and stuck in it, to represent masts, three slivers of bamboo.] CHAPTER XXI NEW ALLIES Now the chief reached for Roger's knife and deftly whittled out the shape of a native canoe. In it he placed several seeds, then, pushing it against the carved ship, he pointed to the man with the bullet wound on his temple and cried, "Pom-pom!" Next he pointed at two seeds in the boat and said, "Pom-pom," and snapped them out of the canoe with his finger. "Would you believe it!" Blodgett gasped. "The heathens went out to the ship in one o' them boats, and Falk fired on 'em!" "And two of 'em was killed!" Davie exclaimed unnecessarily. Roger now laid half a melon on the floor, its flat side down, and moved the boat slowly over to it. That the half-melon represented the island was apparent to all. The natives crowded round us, jabbering questions that we could not understand and of course could not answer; they examined the cook's wound and compared it with the wound their friend had suffered; they pointed at the little boats cut out of melon-rind and laughed uproariously. Now one of them made a suggestion, the others took it up, and the chief split melons and offered a half to each of us.