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Updated: June 24, 2025
As he ducked and turned in despair, a man from the Tiger ran in and caught the buccaneer on his flank, finishing him in short order. The deck was now full of struggling groups, for though a score of the longboat's crew had climbed aboard, the pirates were putting up a fierce resistance.
"Admitted," the Canadian replied, "but we've got to risk it. Freedom is worth paying for. Besides, the longboat's solidly built, and a few miles with the wind behind us is no big deal. By tomorrow, who knows if this ship won't be 100 leagues out to sea? If circumstances are in our favor, between ten and eleven this evening we'll be landing on some piece of solid ground, or we'll be dead.
"Put all the boats in the water, Mr. Shaw," Lingard was saying, with one foot on the rail, ready to leave his ship, "and mount the four-pounder swivel in the longboat's bow. Cast off the sea lashings of the guns, but don't run 'em out yet. Keep the topsails loose and the jib ready for setting, I may want the sails in a hurry. Now, Mr. Carter, I am ready for you."
And now, if you are ready, let us be going." Silently, and with the observance of every precaution to prevent betrayal of the longboat's hiding-place to any chance wanderer in the neighbourhood, the pair forced a way through their leafy bower and up the steep bank until they emerged upon clear ground, when, bearing away to the eastward round the foot of the hill which they had that day ascended, they groped their way cautiously over the unfamiliar ground until, in the course of about half an hour, they caught the dim shimmer of starlight upon water, and, between them and it, a group of dark, shapeless blotches which, upon their nearer approach, they identified as the hovels constituting the fishing village which they had seen during the day from the top of the hill.
But the good canvas of which the longboat's sails were made fortunately withstood the strain, as also did the stout hemp rigging which supported the mast, and as the furious blast swooped down upon us we gathered way and were the next moment flying to the westward before the hurricane, our bows buried deeply in the boiling surge.
Under these dark waters there stretched the bank of shellfish, an inexhaustible field of pearls more than twenty miles long. Captain Nemo, Conseil, Ned Land, and I found seats in the stern of the skiff. The longboat's coxswain took the tiller; his four companions leaned into their oars; the moorings were cast off and we pulled clear. The skiff headed southward. The oarsmen took their time.
He had been the guiding spirit of the whole enterprise, planning it, laying the keel, burning buildings, to obtain nails and iron, hewing trees for the largest beams, showing them how to spin ropes from cocoa-nut fiber, improvising sails from the longboat's canvas pieced out with blankets and odd bits of cloth from the abandoned houses.
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