At the appointed hour next morning, every one on the Reef was astir at the first peep of day.  No disturbance had occurred in the night, and, what is perhaps a little remarkable, the female sentinels had not given any false alarm.  As soon as a look from the Summit gave the governor reason to believe that Waally was not very near him, he ordered preparations to be made for the launch of the Friend Abraham White.  A couple of hours’ work was still required to complete this desirable task; and everybody set about his or her assigned duty with activity and zeal.  Some of the women prepared the breakfast; others carried ammunition to the different guns, while Betts went round and loaded them, one and all; and others, again, picked up such articles of value as had been overlooked in the haste of the previous evening, carrying them either into the crater, or on board the ship.

On examining his fortifications by daylight, the governor resolved to set up something more secure in the way of a gate for the crater.  He also called off two or three of the men to get out the boarding-netting of the ship, which was well provided in that respect; a good provision having been made, byway of keeping the Fejee people at arms’ length.  These two extraordinary offices delayed the work on the ways; and when the whole colony went to breakfast, which they did about an hour after sunrise, the schooner was not yet in the water, though quite ready to be put there, Mark announced that there was no occasion to be in a hurry, no canoes were in sight, and there was time to have everything done deliberately and in order.

This security came very near proving fatal to the whole party.  Most of the men breakfasted under the awning, which was near their work; while the women took that meal in their respective quarters.  Some of the last were in the crater, and some in the ship.  It will be remembered that the awning was erected near the spring, and that the spring was but a short distance from the bridge.  This bridge, it will also be recollected, connected the Reef with an island that stretched away for miles, and which had formed the original range for the swine, after the changes that succeeded the eruption.  It was composed of merely two long ship’s planks, the passage being only some fifty or sixty feet in width.

The governor, now, seldom ate with his people.  He knew enough of human nature to understand that authority was best preserved by avoiding familiarity.  Besides, there is, in truth, no association more unpleasant to those whose manners have been cultivated, than that of the table, with the rude and unrefined.  Bridget, for instance, could hardly be expected to eat with the wives of the seamen; and Mark naturally wished to eat with his own family.  On that occasion he had taken his meal in the cabin of the Rancocus, as usual, and had come down to the awning to see that the hands turned-to as soon as they were through with their own breakfasts.  Just as he was about to issue the necessary order, the air was filled with frightful yells, and a stream of savages poured out of an opening in the rocks, on to the plain of the “hog pasture,” as the adjoining field was called, rushing forward in a body towards the crater.  They had crept along under the rocks by following a channel, and now broke cover within two hundred yards of the point they intended to assail.