The five men whom I addressed--all thoughts of mutiny having by this time been most effectually frightened out of their heads--turned and slouched away forward as meekly as lambs; and the moment that they were gone I was surrounded by an excited crowd of passengers, all of whom had come down from the poop to listen to the story of the five returned seamen, and every one of them had some more or less unpractical suggestion to make.  It was rather unfortunate that they had all heard what had passed, for the very graphic narrative, told by an eye-witness, of the gruesome happenings of the past night, and the powerful suggestion of what was probably taking place at that moment away yonder in the woods, had so acted upon the vivid imaginations of the women that one or two of them were visibly upon the very verge of hysterics, while all were more or less in a state of mortal terror as to what might be their fate should the natives take it into their heads to attack the ship.  For, that the presence of so many white men as they had encountered would suggest to the astute native mind the idea that a ship was somewhere near at hand was so exceedingly likely that it might almost be accepted as a foregone conclusion.  But, terrified though the women were, they behaved marvellously well, and quietly retired when I requested them to do so in order that we men might be left free to discuss details together.  But, even while the chatter was raging round me at its most excited pitch, my mind was busy upon the details of the only plan that was at all feasible.  Our entire available fighting force, counting in the whole of the male passengers, the surgeon, Briggs and his three assistants, Jenkins the steerage passenger, the cook, and the five men who had escaped from the savages, amounted to thirty.  It was, of course, quite impossible to form, from the account of the five escaped seamen, anything like an accurate estimate of the numbers of the savages, but I believed I should be quite safe in setting them down at not less than three hundred.  There were also the four prisoners; but I reflected that as they had not suffered the harrowing experience of the five escaped men, they would probably be still in much too insubordinate a frame of mind to be of any use, and I therefore determined to leave them where they were for the present.  I reckoned, however, that not a man would leave the village, either to attack the ship or for any other purpose, until the gruesome sport upon which they were at that moment engaged had been played out to an end; and I therefore came to the conclusion that I should be quite justified in throwing the balance of strength into the land expedition.  I accordingly divided my force into two equal parts, placing Simpson in charge of the ship and entrusting him with her defence, with a small crew composed of the surgeon, the four stewards, the cook, Jenkins the steerage passenger, Messrs. Morton, Fielder, Acutt, Boyne, Pearson, and Taylor, and one of my own men named Sharland, whose wounds rendered him useless for arduous land service, although he might be made very useful at a pinch aboard the ship.  This left, for the landing expedition, the general, Carter, myself, and seven _Sharks_, and the five men who had escaped in the longboat.  Thus each force consisted of fifteen men.  But I considered that the landing force was far the more formidable of the two, since we numbered among us nine trained fighting men; while, in the improbable event of an attack upon the ship, the party left on board her would have the advantage of the deck as a fighting platform, and, if hard pressed, the saloon and deckhouses to which to retreat.  I also left them all the muskets and boarding pikes, as well, of course, as their own personal firearms, and the two brass carronades.  As for us, the general and I each had a sword, the _Sharks_ carried a cutlass apiece, and every man of us also had a brace of pistols in his belt, and a pocketful of cartridges.  But what I most trusted to for the creation of a good, wholesome panic among the savages was a dozen signal rockets which I had found in the ship's magazine.