United States or Indonesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I had eight men and a midshipman with me, and we all did our utmost to escape. Unfortunately our ship was not in sight, and after a fatiguing and anxious pull for three hours and having two of the boat’s crew wounded, I was, in consequence of the nearest privateer being within pistol shot, obliged to surrender.
Again Benson played see-saw with his sounding-line over the boat’s gunwale. “If my lead isn’t hitting the ’Farnum,’” declared the young skipper, positively, “then it’s the ’Farnum’s’ ghost. Hold steady, now, Hal.” Immediately afterward, Benson caused the lead fairly to dance a jig on whatever it touched at bottom. “What’s the good of that, anyway?” demanded Jacob Farnum.
Added to this, he could not bear the idea of again returning to this dangerous place; and as for the expectation of persuading the Frenchmen to detach a boat’s crew for the purpose of rescuing me from the Typees, he looked upon it as idle; and, with arguments that I could not answer, urged the improbability of their provoking the hostilities of the clan by any such measure; especially as, for the purpose of quieting its apprehensions, they had as yet refrained from making any visit to the bay. “And even should they consent,” said Toby, “they would only produce a commotion in the valley, in which we might both be sacrificed by these ferocious islanders.” This was unanswerable; but still I clung to the belief that he might succeed in accomplishing the other part of my plan; and at last I overcame his scruples, and he agreed to make the attempt.
On our arrival at the stairs, I found another midshipman about my own age, who had been left in charge of the boat’s crew during the other’s absence. He eyed me obliquely; then turning to the elder, “I thought,” said he, “you would never come.
Throw a light down on the asteroid. It must have come from there." The gunner threw a switch and a searchlight port opened in the boat’s belly. Its beam searched downward, swept past, then steadied on two space-clad figures. "It worked," Rip said tiredly. He closed his eyes to guard them against the brilliant glare, then waved his good arm. Santos called from the cave entrance.
The wave rose higher and higher behind them—it looked almost as steep as a wall—and an involuntary cry broke from several of the men as the boat’s stern rose up it. “Row! row!” the mate shouted. But six strokes were pulled and then the wave fell over with a crash, and in a moment they were shooting along with the speed of an arrow in the midst of a mass of seething foam.
They sent from the ships to ask, and we could only say that we didn’t know, but supposed that you were somewhere up in the batteries. Some thought, when you did not return this afternoon, that you had lost your way in the fog; but no one seemed to think that anything serious could have happened to you.” Nelson got up and went to where the boat’s crew were sitting after having finished their meal.
She showed me her stern, and brought up in a piggery. “The devil take your hospitality,” said I. The weather was exceedingly warm, and I was very thirsty, which made me more hasty in my expressions to the Dulciana of the pigstye than I ought to have been. But show me the fair one who would not excuse a sailor thirsty and on the back of an animal as obstinate as a boat’s crew when cutting out.
As for the Isle of Voices, it lay solitary the most part of the year; only now and then a boat’s crew came for copra, and in the bad season, when the fish at the main isle were poisonous, the tribe dwelt there in a body.
After a struggle of some minutes, in which one of the boats had not joined, my senior officer, who had five of his men wounded, ordered the boats to pull off. Shall I say I was disappointed? I most assuredly was, and my boat’s crew murmured. I desired them to be silent.
Word Of The Day