Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/199

] the chief, whom he shot dead. We were all extremely grieved at this misfortune.

Another native, witnessing what passed, leaped from the canoe's mast-head into the sea, not daring to come down upon deck: and immediately a negro, whom we had taken on board at Amboyna, pursued him with a pike, which he had in his hand, but fortunately could not overtake him.

The rage of these barbarians was not yet appeased. A marine, by birth a German, whom likewise we shipped at Amboyna, perceiving the daughter of the unfortunate chief, who had concealed herself in the bottom of the canoe, had already raised his sabre to run her through, when a gunner belonging to the Recherche, Citizen Avignon, caught hold of the madman's arm. He then threw himself between him and the poor girl, whose mother soon gained the shore, distracted at the death of her husband. The daughter, too, wept bitterly for the loss of her father, and we saw her beating herself violently with the fist on the checks and breast.

We detained as hostages the son of the king, and Titifa, chief of the island of Pangaïmotoo: but we all remarked with sorrow, the dejection into which this confinement threw the king's son, whom we had often seen issue his commands with such haughtiness to the subjects of