"I see," said the old man, "like Nelson's repeating frigates off Cadiz, to signalize when the French took their anchors; the main body of his fleet being sixty miles off shore." * * * * * We finished our business at Hanarora the next day, and once more made all sail to the westward for a cruise among "The Groups." CHAPTER XVI. THE COOPER "ROMANCES."--INCIDENTS.--BYRON'S ISLAND. "What did you value your life at, when the cannibals were holding their powwow over you, the other day to Dominica?" asked the cooper, who was whittling a charge for his pipe from a long twist of "nigger-head." "At a very low figure," said I. "At one time I'd have been glad to sell out at a nominal price. But do you really suppose they _are_ cannibals?" "Of course they are," returned the cooper. "Probably one of the points they were disputing about was, how it was best to cook and dress you." "But Peter says they had no intention of killing us at all, and as he understands the language, I suppose he knows best. But I confess, that in spite of his assurances, I felt anything but safe; for at any moment some impulsive child of nature might have driven a lance through me, just to end the controversy." "And don't you see," said Fisher, "that Peter's view of the matter would partially spoil the poetry of Cooper's yarn, that he means to found on the facts?" "Of course," said the cooper. "There's not half as much romance in knowing that you are to be cooped up in a bamboo calaboose, and ransomed for old Revolutionary muskets, as there is in the other view of the matter." "And what may be your other view of the matter?" I asked. "Why, in the absence of any positive knowledge, you can let the imagination run free," said the cooper, rising to light his pipe at the hanging lamp, and striking an attitude. "You may just suppose yourself neatly transfixed by the javelin of a barbaric chieftain, and your spirit passing gently away to the music of tomtoms, blending with melodious voices chanting the wild 'hula-hula.' Then," he continued, shaking his immense beard, as he warmed with his subject, "you are laid out in state in the halls of the Marquesan Cæsars (or Montezumas, if you prefer that), to grace a 'Kava feast' of princes of the blood; you are done to a turn at the hands of the chief doctor of the palace; and served up in curry as the leading dish at a right royal banquet, flanked by immense bunches of the golden banana at one end, and pyramids of bread-fruit at the other." "Delightful!" said I. "There's nothing in Fox's Book of Martyrs half as satisfactory--to the narrator. But, being the hero of the adventure myself, I should vote for the calaboose and the ransom. Besides, it would be some satisfaction to know one's precise value in this market; just how many old flint-locks you are worth, or whether you could be quoted at par, with old nigger-head tobacco, pound for pound."