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"Sir," answered the corporal, removing one of his hands from the steer-oar, and respectfully touching his cap, "it's poor Le Noir, the Frenchman, killed by the Injins yesterday, and as for our absence, it couldn't be helped, sir; but it's a long report I have to make, and perhaps, captain, you would like to hear it more at leisure than I can tell it here."
Harvey held his right hand, and Atkins, who knew that the end was near, had taken off his soddened cap, and bent his face low over the haft of the steer-oar. "Do you feel any pain, Mr. Morrison?" asked Tessa, as she stroked the old man's face, and tried to hide her tears.
Samuela was "all there," though, and as the great beast passed he plunged a harpoon into him with such force and vigour that the very socket entered the blubber it needed all the strength I could muster, even with such an aid as the nineteen-feet steer-oar, to swing the boat right round in his wake, and prevent her being capsized by his headlong rush.
"Hush!" said Proctor, and his hand trembled as he grasped the steer-oar. Then he drew the child to his bosom and caressed him almost fiercely. For half an hour the barque slipped along, and Proctor sat and steered and smoked and watched the child, who now slumbered at his feet.
Anyway, S.W. is within a point or less of a good course for the Admiralty Group." He wore the boat's head round, as Chard eased off the main-sheet in silence, and for the rest of the night they took turn and turn about at the steer-oar.
A quick glance showed him that none of the crew were missing they were all holding on to the swamped boat and 'swimming' her out away from the reef, and shouting loudly for him to come alongside. Pushing the steer-oar before him, he soon reached the boat, and, despite his own unwillingness, his crew insisted on his getting in.
As the second mate grasped the haft of the steer-oar again another shot from the captain's boat fell some distance ahead. "He's running away from us as fast as he can," said Harvey; "look, he's hauled up a couple of points!" "Ay, so he has. And our short Sniders won't carry any further than the one he's firing with, so we have no chance of hitting him, I'm afraid. However, just let us try.
The five grim, silent men landed him on the beach, and Diaz pointed without a word to the pile of stores, and then, grasping his steer-oar, motioned to his crew to push off. "You devils! You fiends incarnate! Are you going to leave me here to die alone in this awful place?" cried Danvers, as with clenched and uplifted hands he saw Diaz swing the boat's head seaward.
"Give it to her, boys," he said to the crew, taking the steer-oar in his hand, and heading the boat towards a small fore-and-aft schooner lying half a mile away in the Matafele horn of the reef encircling Apia Harbour. The four native seamen bent to their oars in silence, and sped swiftly through the darkness over the calm waters of the harbour.
The officer who steered with a steer-oar wore a brass-bound cap and brass-buttoned jacket, and every now and then turned to speak to the man in the tweed suit, who sat smoking a cigar beside him. "By jingo! she's a yacht, I believe," said Charlie Blount, who had been keenly watching the approaching boat; "I'm off.