Upon this unfrequented and distant Japanese isle the exiles
had retained all of their medieval military savagery, to which
had been added the aboriginal ferocity of the head-hunting
natives they had found there and with whom they had intermarried.
The little colony, far from making any advances in
arts or letters had, on the contrary, relapsed into primeval
ignorance as deep as that of the natives with whom they had
cast their lot--only in their arms and armor, their military
training and discipline did they show any of the influence of
their civilized progenitors. They were cruel, crafty, resourceful
wild men trapped in the habiliments of a dead past, and
armed with the keen weapons of their forbears. They had not
even the crude religion of the Malaysians they had absorbed
unless a highly exaggerated propensity for head-hunting might
be dignified by the name of religion. To the tender mercies of
such as these were the castaways of the Halfmoon likely to be
consigned, for what might sixteen men with but four revolvers
among them accomplish against near a thousand savage
samurai?
Theriere, Ward, Simms, and the remaining sailors at the
beach busied themselves with the task of retrieving such of the
wreckage and the salvage of the Halfmoon as the waves had
deposited in the shallows of the beach.
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