“Indeed, but I do, sir.  The savages told Jones that the boat had a bird painted in its starn-sheets; and that was the case with our launch, Mr. Mark, which was ornamented with a spread-eagle in that very spot.  Then, one of the men was said to have a red mark on his face; and you may remember, sir, that Bill Brown had a nat’ral brand of that sort.  Jones only mentioned the thing this arternoon, as we was at work together; and I detarmined to let you know all about it, at the first occasion.  Depend on it, Mr. Woolston, some of our chaps is still living.”

This unexpected intelligence momentarily drove the recollection of the present danger from the governor’s mind.  He sent for Jones, and questioned him closely touching the particulars of his information; the answers he received certainly going far towards corroborating Betts’s idea of the character of the unknown men.  Jones was never able even to get on the island where these men were said to be; but he had received frequent descriptions of their ages, appearances, numbers, &c.  It was also reported by those who had seen them, that several of the party had died of hunger before the boat reached the group; and that only about half of those who had originally taken to the boat, which belonged to a ship that had been wrecked, lived to get ashore.  The man with a mark on his face was represented as being very expert with tools, and was employed by Waally to build him a canoe that would live out in the gales of the ocean.  This agreed perfectly with the trade and appearance of Brown, who had been the Rancocus’s carpenter, and had the sort of mark so particularly described.

The time, the boat, the incidents of the wreck, meagre as the last were, as derived through the information of Jones, and all the other facts Mark could glean in a close examination of the man’s statements, went to confirm the impression that a portion of those who had been carried to leeward in the Rancocus’s launch, had escaped with their lives, and were at that moment prisoners in the power of the very savage chief who now threatened his colony with destruction.

But the emergency did not admit of any protracted inquiry into, or any consultation on the means necessary to relieve their old shipmates from a fate so miserable.  Circumstances required that the governor should now give his attention to the important concerns immediately before him.

Chapter XVIII.

    “To whom belongs this valley fair,
    That sleeps beneath the filmy air,
          Even like a living thing? 
    Silent as infant at the breast,
    Save a still sound that speaks of rest,
          That streamlet’s murmuring?”

    Wilson.