Henry C. Rowland

“ If the worst came to the worst, I intended to make the scoundrels get out the sweeps and pull, for I knew that if I went to sleep I should never wake again.
Poor little Brown cried when he said good-bye to me as I stepped into the boat and entrenched myself in the stern with the rifle across my knees. Boles waved to me from up the beach, but he couldn't leave the girl long enough to come down and shake hands. No doubt that was all right enough, as she was out of her head with fever, and throwing herself all over the place. ”

“ Pipe after pipe I filled, and hour after hour I listened to the suck of the sweeps in the sea, and the chunk-a-chunk in the row-locks, until finally the idea seemed to creep into my brain—as crazy ideas will to a man at night in an open boat with no land in sight—that this was eternity, and that through all time we were to pull away in long changeless strokes, over that black, silent water.
Twice I gave them "oars" to rest a bit, and take a bite and a mouthful of water—for an engine won't run on no fuel—and once I had all hands shift sides. ”

“ I'm the only one that knows where the island bears, so if by any chance I was to take sick and croak, the rest of ye'd be in bad shape. When we strike the beach, you can take your boat and go to hell—only be careful to wait until we do strike the beach. Now you can go to sleep, or smoke, or say your prayers; only just hang on to your jaw-tackle, and save your wind for a white-ash breeze if this one drops—savvy?"
One—the dago I called him—gave an assenting whine. The others turned their backs and lit their pipes. ”

“ One of the scoundrels who had been asleep up in the bow was a giant. I expect that his father had probably been a deep-chested bosun on some British ship of the line. His mother might have been anything from an Aleutian Islander to a Terre del Fuegan. I called him aft to stroke, as he had the weight, and seemed to know how to handle an oar. He came with an eagerness that I put down to the magazine rifle across my knee. ”

“ I'll just bet that if that girl had been a native woman, or old and ugly instead of the finely built, heavy-maned beauty that she was in spite of her hardships, he would have trusted her to Brown long enough to wish me luck.
That's always the way. Just when you get to sort of like a man, some red-headed girl comes along and—but never mind all that! ”

“ IN THE WHALEBOAT BOLES and Brown probably swear to this day I that it was all my fault that our little schooner got hung up to dry on the reef off Mongir Island. I guess that's right enough, but it has sometimes struck me as kind of funny that whenever anything went wrong it was sure to be my fault, but if a thing turned out rights and we happened to make a pot of money, it was all owing to the foresight of the other fellow. ”

“ At first I was as stiff as a two-year-old the day after his first run, and I came in for more mauling than I've had to take in all the rest of my life put together, but the pulling was the best thing I could have done to get my hinges in working order, and pretty soon I could feel the strength coming back, and the blood beginning to circulate again. ”

“ They had got me sitting on the second thwart, and the dago shoved one of the big, heavy sweeps into each hand. The Scandinavian had thrown another lashing around my ankles and made it fast through one of the limbers, and not satisfied with that he passed another around my waist. ”