"BUMPBACEING" AT VAU VAU. 243 



he told them he felt a pain in his back. Examining 

 the spot indicated by him, they found a bullet just 

 beneath the skin, which a touch with the knife allowed 

 to tumble out. Further examination revealed the 

 strange fact that the bullet, after striking his breast- 

 bone, had glanced aside and travelled round his body 

 just beneath the skin, without doing him any further 

 harm. In proof of his story, he showed me the two 

 scars and the perforated buckle-plate. 



At another time, being in charge of a picket of 

 Germans, he and his command were captured by a party 

 of Confederates, who haled him before their colonel, a 

 southern gentleman of the old school. In the course of 

 his interrogation by the southern officer, he was asked 

 where he hailed from. He replied, " London, England." 

 "Then," said the colonel, "how is it you find yourself 

 fighting for these accursed Yankees ? " The cockney 

 faltered out some feeble excuse or another, which his 

 captor cut short by saying, " I've a great respect for the 

 English, and consequently I'll let you go this time. 

 But if ever I catch you again, you're gone up. As for 



those d d Dutchmen, they'll be strung up inside of 



five minutes." And they were. 



So with yarn, song, and dance, the evening passed 

 pleasantly away ; while the two old hookers jogged 

 amicably along side by side, like two market-horses 

 whose drivers are having a friendly crack. Along about 

 midnight we exchanged crews again, and parted with 

 many expressions of good-will — we to the southward, she 

 to the eastward, for some particular preserve believed in 

 by her commander. 



In process of time we made the land of Vau Vau, a 

 picturesque, densely wooded, and in many places pre- 

 cipitous, group of islands, the approach being singularly 



