On board the ship-of-war, indeed, there was little doing; for, her business being to fight, she was always in a state of readiness for action.

Her signal guns, fired the previous night, had recalled Montague to tell him of the threatened attack by the savages.

A few brief orders were given, and they were prepared for whatever might occur.

In the village, too, the arrangements to repel attack having been made, white men and native converts alike rested with their arms placed in convenient proximity to their hands.
In a wild and densely-wooded part of the island far removed from those portions which we have yet had occasion to describe, a band of fiendish-looking men were making arrangements for one of those unprovoked assaults which savages are so prone to make on those who settle near them.
They were all of them in a state of almost complete nudity; but the complicated tattooing on their dark skins gave them the appearance of being more clothed than they really were.

Their arms consisted chiefly of enormous clubs of hard wood, spears, and bows; and, in order to facilitate their escape should they chance to be grasped in a hand-to-hand conflict, they had covered their bodies with oil, which glistened in the sunshine as they moved about their village.
Conspicuous among these truly savage warriors was the form of Keona, with his right arm bound up in a sort of sling.