“When next old Bastin wants to tell a lie,” commented Bickley, “he should make up his mind as to what it is to be, and stick to it.  I wonder what he is after with that paraffin?  Not going to dose any of my patients with it, I hope.  He was arguing the other day that it is a great remedy taken internally, being quite unaware that the lamp variety is not used for that purpose.”

“Perhaps he means to swallow some himself, just to show that he is right,” I suggested.

“The stomach-pump is at hand,” said Bickley, and the matter dropped.

Next morning I got up before it was light.  Having some elementary knowledge of the main facts of astronomy, which remained with me from boyhood when I had attended lectures on the subject, which I had tried to refresh by help of an encyclopedia I had brought from the ship, I wished to attempt to obtain an idea of our position by help of the stars.  In this endeavour, I may say, I failed absolutely, as I did not know how to take a stellar or any other observation.

On my way out of our native house I observed, by the lantern I carried, that the compartment of it occupied by Bastin was empty, and wondered whither he had gone at that hour.  On arriving at my observation-post, a rocky eminence on open ground, where, with Tommy at my side, I took my seat with a telescope, I was astonished to see or rather to hear a great number of the natives walking past the base of the mound towards the bush.  Then I remembered that some one, Marama, I think, had informed me that there was to be a great sacrifice to Oro at dawn on that day.  After this I thought no more of the matter but occupied myself in a futile study of the heavenly bodies.  At length the dawn broke and put a period to my labours.

Glancing round me before I descended from the little hill, I saw a flame of light appear suddenly about half a mile or more away among those trees which I knew concealed the image of Oro.  On this personally I had never had the curiosity to look, as I knew that it was only a hideous idol stuck over with feathers and other bedizenments.  The flame shot suddenly straight into the still air and was followed a few seconds later by the sound of a dull explosion, after which it went out.  Also it was followed by something else—­a scream of rage from an infuriated mob.

At the foot of the hill I stopped to wonder what these sounds might mean.  Then of a sudden appeared Bickley, who had been attending some urgent case, and asked me who was exploding gunpowder.  I told him that I had no idea.

“Then I have,” he answered.  “It is that ass Bastin up to some game.  Now I guess why he wanted that paraffin.  Listen to the row.  What are they after?”

“Sacrificing Bastin, perhaps,” I replied, half in jest.  “Have you your revolver?”

He nodded.  We always wore our pistols if we went out during the dark hours.

“Then perhaps we had better go to see.”