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He coaxed and blustered by turns, but in vain; the natives were neither to be intimidated nor appeased, and as a final resort he was obliged to call together his boat’s crew, and pull away from what he termed the most infernal place he ever stepped upon. Lucky was it for him and for us that we were not honoured on our departure by a salute of stones from the hands of the exasperated Tiors.
At length, after a great deal of changing and fidgeting, consequent upon the election of a stroke-oar: the inability of one gentleman to pull on this side, of another to pull on that, and of a third to pull at all, the boat’s crew are seated. ‘Shove her off!’ cries the cockswain, who looks as easy and comfortable as if he were steering in the Bay of Biscay.
After rowing round the lake in search of fresh adventures, and finding none, we amused ourselves by cutting off several branches of the mangrove trees strung with oysters, and being tired of rowing where there was so little novelty, we turned the boat’s nose towards the river, on reaching which we again startled numerous flocks of screaming birds, five of which we shot; but as they were only noddies and boobies, we did not take the trouble to pick them up.
You may imagine that we are all burning with curiosity to hear how it is that you came back all alone in that curious craft astern, and, above all, how you have brought with you this prize-money. All we have heard at present is that the whole of the boat’s crew that went with you are dead.
One of the boat’s crew hooked one of the latter by the gills with the boat-hook, when his arm was immediately paralysed, and he let it fall, calling out that someone had struck him. The man near him laid hold of the fish again as it was making for the shore, and the shock he received threw him on his knees. I ran up to him, for he appeared in great pain.
They consisted of two pounds of infamous Yankee tea, three pounds of tobacco made into a roll, a jar of salt butter, a six-pound ham, and a bag of hickory nuts. The tea and ham I bought, and one of the boat’s crew had the tobacco.
For a moment they seemed drawn backwards by the rush of the water, then the boat became fixed, and a moment later the water left them. “Now, all together before the next wave reaches her.” With a united effort they lifted and ran the boat her own length further up. The next wave barely reached the boat’s stern. Before another came she was well up on the sand. Then the mate pointed upwards.
He managed to correct the boat’s twisting by using the stern tubes, but he was no longer in full control. For a moment panic gripped him. Without full control he couldn’t get back to the asteroid! Then he forced himself to steady down. He sized up the situation. They were still underway, the stern tubes pushing, but their trajectory would take them right under the crippled Connie boat.
Two of the men jumped on board and hauled up the anchor, and nothing but the presence of the admiral prevented a burst of laughter among the boat’s crew as the stone came to the surface. As it was, there was a broad grin on their faces. The two men resumed their places in the boat, and the cutter was towed to the side of the flag-ship.
Joyce,” he said, as the latter dipped his paddle in the water and turned the boat’s head towards the island. “I think we had better wait till the sun gets pretty low. We know there ain’t any villages near the wreck, for she must have been there a good month afore we found her, and it was certain then that no native had been near her.
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