Baffled and perplexed—Plans for a rescue.  
While the men assembled round the prostrate form of Mr Mason were attempting to rescue him from his state of stupor, poor Corrie began to shew symptoms of returning vitality. A can of water, poured over him by Henry, did much to restore him. But no sooner was he enabled to understand what was going on, and to recall what had happened, than he sprang up with a wild cry of despair, and rushed towards the blazing house. Again Henry’s quick arm arrested a friend in his mad career.
 
“Oh! she’s there! Alice is there!” shrieked the boy, as he struggled passionately to free himself.
 
“You can do nothing, Corrie,” said Henry, trying to soothe him.
 
“Coward!” gasped the boy in a paroxysm of rage, as he clenched his fist and struck his captor on the chest with all his force.
 
“Hold him,” said Henry, turning to John Bumpus, who at that moment came up.
 
Bumpus nodded intelligently, and seized the boy, who uttered a groan of anguish as he ceased a struggle which he felt was hopeless in such an iron gripe.
 
“Now, friends—all of you,” shouted Henry, the moment he was relieved of his charge, “little Alice is in that house—we must pull it down! who will lend a hand?”
 
He did not pause for an answer, but seizing an axe, rushed through the smoke and began to cut down the door-posts. The whole party there assembled, numbering about fifty, rushed forward, as one man, to aid in the effort. The attempt was a wild one. Had Henry considered for a moment, he would have seen that, in the event of their succeeding in pulling down the blazing pile, they should in all probability smother the child in the ruins.
 
“The shell is in the out-house,” said Corrie, eagerly, to the giant who held him.
 
“Wot shell?” inquired Bumpus.
 
“The shell that they blow like a horn to call the people to work with.”
 
“Ah! you’re sane again,” said the sailor, releasing him; “go, find it, lad, and blow till yer cheeks crack.”
 
Corrie was gone long before Jo had concluded even that short remark. In another second the harsh but loud sound of the shell rang over the hill-side. The settlers, black and white, immediately ceased their pursuit of the savages, and from every side they came trooping in by dozens. Without waiting to inquire the cause of what was being done, each man, as he arrived, fell to work on the blazing edifice, and, urged on by Henry’s voice and example, toiled and moiled in the midst of fire and smoke, until the pastor’s house was literally pulled to pieces.
 
Fortunately for little Alice, she had been carried out of that house long before by Keona, who, being subtle as well as revengeful, knew well how to strike at the tenderest part of the white man’s heart.
 
While her friends were thus frantically endeavouring to deliver her from the burning house in which they supposed her to be, Alice was being hurried through the woods by a steep mountain path in the direction of the native village. Happily for the feelings of her father, the fact was made known, soon after the house had been pulled down, by the arrival of a small party of native settlers bearing one of the child’s shoes. They had found it, they said, sticking in the mud, about a mile off, and had tracked the little footsteps a long way into the mountains by the side of the prints made by the naked feet of a savage. At length they had lost the tracks amid the hard lava rocks and had given up the chase.
 
“We must follow them up instantly,” said Mr Mason, who had by this time recovered; “no time is to be lost.”
 
“Ay, time is precious, who will go?” cried Henry, who, begrimed with fire and smoke, and panting vehemently from recent exertion, had just at that moment come towards the group.
 
“Take me! Oh! take me, Henry!” cried Corrie, in a beseeching tone, as he sprang promptly to his friend’s side.
 
At any other time, Henry would have smiled at the enthusiastic offer of such a small arm to fight the savages; but fierce anger was in his breast at that moment;—he turned from the poor boy and looked round with a frown, as he observed that, although the natives crowded round him at once, neither Gascoyne, nor Thorwald, nor Captain Montague shewed any symptom of an intention to accompany him.
 
“Nay, be not angry, lad,” said Gascoyne, observing the frown; “your blood is young and hot, as it should be; but it behoves us to have a council of war before we set out on this expedition, which, believe me, will be no trifling one, if I know anything of savage ways and doings.”
 
“Mr Gascoyne is right,” said Montague, turning to the missionary, who stood regarding the party with anxious looks, quite unable to offer advice on such an occasion, and clasping the little shoe firmly in both hands; “it seems to me that those who know the customs of savage warfare should give their advice first. You may depend on all the aid that it is in my power to give.”
 
“Ole Thorwald is our leader when we are compelled to fight in self-defence,” said Mr Mason; “would God that it were less frequently we were obliged to demand his services. He knows what is best to be done.”
 
“I know what is best to do,” said Thorwald, “when I have to lead men into action, or to shew them how to fight. But, to say truth, I don’t plume myself on possessing more than an average share of the qualities of the terrier dog. When niggers are to be hunted out of holes in the mountains like rabbits, I will do what in me lies to aid in the work; but I would rather be led than lead if you can find a better man.”
 
Thorwald said this with a rueful countenance, for he had hoped to have settled this war in a pitched battle; and there were few things the worthy man seemed to enjoy more than a stand-up fight on level ground. A fair field and no favour was his delight, but climbing the hills was his mortal aversion. He was somewhat too corpulent and short of wind for that.
 
“Come, Gascoyne,” said Henry, “you know more about the savages than anybody here, and if I remember rightly, you have told me that you are acquainted with most of the mountain passes.”
 
“With all of them, lad,” interposed Gascoyne; “I know every pass and cavern on the island.”
 
“What, then, would you advise?” asked Montague.
 
“If a British officer can put himself under a simple trading skipper,” said Gascoyne, “I may perhaps shew what ought to be done in this emergency.”
 
“I can co-operate with any one who proves himself worthy of confidence,” retorted Montague, sharply.
 
“Well, then,” continued the other, “it is in vain to think of doing any good by a disorderly chase into mountains like these. I would advise that our forces be divided into thr............