Harry Collingwood

“ Therefore we were obliged to trust quite as much to our ears as to our eyes for warning of the approach of an enemy; but even they did not help us much, for the island was but a small one, and the thunder of the surf upon its weather shore, borne to us with almost startling distinctness, mingled with the sough of the wind among the trees and the lap of the ripples alongside, making with these a combination of sound that effectually screened any such movement as the launching of a canoe or the distant dip of paddles. ”

“ The strange sail appeared to be a fairly fast craft, for before we had quite finished our breakfast the head of her canvas appeared above the horizon to us, even though we were still sitting upon the thwarts, and we immediately brought Cunningham’s telescope to bear upon her. The first glimpse that I caught of her through the lenses satisfied me that she was a small vessel, the quickness and violence of her movements—for she was rolling heavily—bearing unmistakable evidence of that fact; and ten minutes later we discovered her to be topsail-schooner rigged. ”

“ The beach immediately to leeward of the schooner was strewed with fragments of wreckage, among which we recognised the galley and some fragments of the boats; but what gave us the greatest satisfaction of all was to see two apparently inanimate figures—those of the carpenter and the sailmaker—rise slowly to their feet, walk down to the water’s edge, stare intently in our direction under the sharp of their hands, and then wave their hands frantically in response to our waving, as they recognised the fact that we were aboard the wreck, and for the present, at all events, safe. ”

“ As may be imagined, my sleep that night was of a somewhat intermittent character, for a boat’s thwart is not the most comfortable bed in the world, and I was fully conscious of the responsibility that had been laid upon me to guide the gig, and the lives which had been entrusted to her, over the trackless ocean, without the aid of chart or nautical instruments of any kind save the toy compass attached to Cunningham’s watch chain. ”

“ They came running and leaping down the beach in pursuit of the now fast-moving schooner, each man grasping a single spear in his right hand and three or four more and a war club in his left, the whole of them yelling like demons. At that moment Chips appeared under the bows, and the sight of him was greeted by the savages with a howl of exultation, for they seemed to think that since he was down on the sand they had him in their power. ”

“ With not a breath of air stirring it was intensely hot, the rays of the unclouded sun beating down upon us fiercely as the breath of a furnace, and I inwardly execrated that scoundrel Bainbridge and his lawless crew as I thought of the crowded longboat and the hapless women and children—to say nothing of the wounded skipper—pent up in her, with nothing to protect them from the pitiless heat and glare.
“Well, shipmates,” I said, “we shall do ourselves no good by lying here idly sweltering. ”

“ The getting of Cunningham into his suit, and the arranging of all the preliminaries, such as the rigging of a derrick wherewith to hoist to the surface the nets of oysters after Cunningham had filled them, the hauling of the longboat alongside to receive the first load, and so on, kept us busy for a full half-hour, during which the skipper paced to and fro, urging us to hurry, and gnawing his finger nails to the quick in his excitement and impatience. ”

“ At that moment the savages were moving so rapidly and so erratically as they swung down the cliff face that accurate shooting would have been exceedingly difficult; but the instant that the first native reached the beach and paused for a second to seize a club and a handful of spears from those which had been cast down from the summit of the cliff, the engineer, lying prone on the deck, with his weapon resting on the low rail of the schooner’s bulwarks, covered him, and the next instant the shot rang out and the man toppled over, mortally hit. ”

“ As it was, with the outfly of the hurricane that weird, unnatural, ruddy light of which I have spoken almost immediately died out from the sky, leaving the night as pitch-dark as before, save for the ghostly gleam of phosphorescent light which arose from the storm-swept ocean, and which gave the water, as far as it could be seen, the appearance as if moonlight were shining up through it. ”

“ The night passed uneventfully, wind and sea gradually moderating all through the hours of darkness, until, by the dawn of the following day, both had so far gone down that we could once more make sail upon the gig with perfect safety. It is true that there was still a rather heavy swell running, but even that was fast diminishing, and there was no sea to speak of, the wind being of the strength known to sailors as a “royal” breeze, that is to say, a wind of so moderate a force that a ship of ordinary size could show her royals to it. ”

“ The first of these was that the gale was breaking, while the second was that the dawn was at hand, for far away to leeward of us the sky was paling, down to a certain point, beneath which the shadow lay as dark as ever, but was assuming, even as we stood, a certain definiteness of shape, ultimately resolving itself into the outline of what seemed a distant hill, with deeper shadows between ourselves and it, which, in turn, developed into a low, bush-crowned cliff, out of the base of which a sandy beach presently grew as the light gathered strength. ”

“ There were thousands of them in the air about the reef, and many more thousands of them sitting on the reef itself. The time was no doubt coming when the guano of these birds, their dead bodies, and the refuse of their food, mingling and agglomerating with the sand and rotting seaweed, would form an extraordinarily rich soil, upon which a few coconuts, drifting across the illimitable ocean, would be cast up by the surf, and, becoming buried, would sprout, throw out roots and shoots, and become trees, as has happened in the case of so many others of the Pacific islands. ”

“ And all this time so absorbed were we in the chase that we were scarcely conscious of the fact that the wind was steadily freshening every minute, the result being that, when at length we were compelled to abandon the hope of being seen and picked up, we suddenly awoke to the fact that it was blowing quite a strong breeze, and that it had kicked up such a high, steep sea that it was no longer possible for us to round-to and ride to a sea anchor as we had done on the night but one before. ”

“ But the man worked his way steadily in, swung himself off the yard to the topmast rigging, and, with the merchant sailor’s usual deliberation, descended until he vanished below the horizon line, seemingly without giving a single glance at the widespreading surface of sea that stretched away for miles on either side of him.
“That will do, Sails,” I said; “you may belay your flourishing, and get down off the thwart. That shellback has gone down on deck without so much as a glance in our direction.” ”

“ And with the disappearance of the sun the wind sank until it died away altogether and the schooner lost steerage way, while the heavens assumed a dark, lowering appearance, and the atmosphere became close, suffocating, and so oppressively hot that even the thinnest and lightest of clothing was an almost unendurable burden, and every article was dispensed with that could be discarded without outraging decency. But although the wind had completely died away, the swell did not diminish ”

“ There were we, five men cast away upon an uncharted island in mid-Pacific, far from all the usual ship tracks; our hopes of rescue consisting in the possibility that we might be taken off, sooner or later, by a stray whaler, or, failing that, of effecting our escape eventually in a craft to be built by ourselves—provided that we should prove possessed of the requisite skill to build her out of the materials at our disposal. At that moment, and under those circumstances, gold was just about as valueless to us as the pebbles on the beach ”

“ Then came the thundering crash of another mountain of water upon her deck, accompanied by the sound of rending woodwork as the companion cover parted company and was swept away; a whole Niagara of water poured down through the opening upon my devoted head, and as I clung to the handrail with the grip of a drowning man the schooner struck a third time, with such terrific violence that I fully expected the hull to go to pieces about my ears. But no, the stanchly built little hooker still held together, although I knew that her bottom must be stove in like a cracked egg-shell ”

“ Murdock and I therefore ran at our utmost speed to the beach, cast adrift the catamaran, sprang aboard her, thrust her head offshore, and then threw ourselves upon the halyards and mast-headed the yard, when I seized the steering paddle and headed the craft for an opening between the breakers on the reef, while Murdock stationed himself beside me, with his hand shielding his eyes as he stared seaward, anxiously watching for the first glimpse of the object of which we were in pursuit. ”

“ Sailing before the wind was a very different matter from plugging to windward with the sheet flattened well in, and although our shift of helm had the effect of making it seem that the wind had suddenly died away almost to nothing, there was no longer that heart-breaking smack-smack of the small seas against our weather bow which had seemed to retard our way in such an exasperating fashion. ”

“ Come along; we have not a moment to waste if we are to save the daylight.”
With one accord each of my companions stepped forward, eager to accompany me the moment that there was a question of saving life; but I needed only one man, and I chose Murdock, as being the smartest seaman and the strongest man among them: and without further ado we took to our heels and raced to the beach, I shouting over my shoulder to Cunningham to stay where he was and guide us by signalling with his hands the direction in which we should steer. ”

“ Thus far we had observed nothing indicating that the island was inhabited by others than ourselves: but it must be remembered that the schooner had been wrecked in a bay hemmed in on the land side by cliffs, and that hitherto our farthest excursion had been to the top of the cliffs and just the few yards inland which were necessary to enable us to procure bananas from the trees growing right up to the cliff edge; the remainder of the island was therefore, so far, a terra incognita to us all, and might, for aught that we could tell to the contrary, be swarming with savages. ”

“ I agreed. “Well, if you won’t turn in, perhaps you will be good enough to keep a lookout here while I go for’ard and see to the battening down. There is not much to be done, but the little that needs doing might as well be done at once.” And therewith I left him and staggered along the squirming deck to the forecastle head, where Chips and Sails were perched upon the windlass bitts, out of the way of the water that was constantly slopping in over one bow or the other, talking together in a low-pitched murmur, and staring awestruck at the incandescent sky. ”

“ True, the sea was a trifle heavy for navigation in so frail a craft as a small canoe, yet the two savages were experts in the handling of such craft, and it was therefore scarcely likely that they had met with a mishap of any description—indeed, all that was needed to ensure their perfect safety was to keep the canoe dead before the sea, and she would go along without shipping a drop of water; even I, comparatively inexpert as I was, would not have hesitated to undertake such a voyage, under the influence of so powerful an inducement as that which we suspected to animate the two natives. ”

“ I sang out to the two men who were in the boat receiving the oysters as they came up to seize a couple of oars and violently splash the surface of the water with them, in the hope that the sound would drive the brute away—for, after all, the shark, voracious as it is, is a timid creature, easily frightened by any sudden or unaccustomed noise. ”

“ Lay in your oars, men. I think, in prospect of what that cloud promises, that we may venture to spare ourselves any further ash-flourishing to-day, for we shall have a breeze before very long, with thunder, lightning, and rain as well, unless I am greatly mistaken. And we will pipe to supper at once, so that we may be able to get our meal in peace and quietness, and have it over and done with before the breeze comes. We are likely enough to have plenty of other matters than eating and drinking to think about and attend to when that happens. ”

“ Playing poker, or what?”
“Now, my dear chap, don’t you go and turn rusty as well as the rest of us, or there’s no knowing what may happen; for, let me tell you, we’re all just as savage as bears with sore heads,” remonstrated Cunningham. “No,” he continued, “we’ve not been playing poker, or hunt the slipper, or even kiss in the ring; to put it plainly, we’ve been trying to do the impossible. The long and the short of it is, Temple, that we have used up our last scrap of available timber, and there still remains a good half-hour’s work to be done on the cradle before we dare start to wedge up. ”

“ It happened to be my eight hours in, that night; therefore, since it was hopeless to think of sleeping in my bunk on such a hot, breathless night, I stretched myself out on the wheel grating, shortly after eight bells of the second dog-watch, and was soon fast asleep, despite the hardness of my bed, while Cunningham sat near me, keeping such a lookout as was possible under the circumstances. ”