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Updated: May 24, 2025
The brawny hand had seized the swaying tackle and three seamen were already scrambling into the swinging craft when a revolver cracked; the big leader threw up his hands with a yell of agony and toppled headlong upon the deck. Then a lithe figure vaulted over the longboat's gunwale. One after another three seamen came tumbling out abashed and overawed. The captain regained his feet and senses.
An instant later, the longboat's sailors helped us overboard one after the other, and we set foot on level sand in a meter and a half of water. Captain Nemo gave us a hand signal. We followed him down a gentle slope and disappeared under the waves. There the obsessive fears in my brain left me. I became surprisingly calm again.
It's sheltered from the strongest winds, and the sea is never very turbulent here, highly favorable conditions for diving work. Now let's put on our underwater suits, and we'll begin our stroll." I didn't reply, and while staring at these suspicious waves, I began to put on my heavy aquatic clothes, helped by the longboat's sailors. Captain Nemo and my two companions suited up as well.
This done, I instructed the men to clear away the longboat's painter and to bend it securely round the boat's oars in such a manner as to make a sort of sea-anchor of them, leaving about a fathom of the end of the painter clear to which to bend on the oil-can.
Yet, despite the agony of horror that froze my blood, I instinctively thrust my helm hard down and flattened in the sheets fore and aft; for the thought came to me that, perchance, a few fathoms out there, veiled from sight in the soft, velvet blackness of the night, some poor wretch a victim, like myself, to the fury of the late gale clinging desperately to a fragment of wreckage, might have caught a glimpse of the longboat's sails, sliding blackly along against the stars, and have emitted those terrible cries as a last despairing appeal for help and succour.
Captain Marshall then picked his longboat's crew which consisted of Dick Chichester, George Burton, Robert Hogan, and Edward Fenner and directed them to make all necessary preparations for accompanying him; after which they were to turn in and take their rest until they should be summoned on deck.
And now we had good reason to congratulate ourselves upon the fact that we in the longboat had taken the gig in tow, for the strain of the smaller boat kept the longboat's stern down, and in a great measure counteracted the leverage of the mast which tended to depress and bury our bows, but for which I feel convinced that the longboat, stout craft though she was, would have been driven under by the tremendous force of the wind and swamped by an inrush of water over the bows.
As the longboat's boat hook caught the Wanderer's ladder for the third time the crates and casings were carried down and carefully deposited in the stern sheets. About this time Cunningham appeared. He paused by the rail for a minute and looked up at the Cleighs, father and son. He was pale, and his attitude suggested pain and weakness, but he was not too weak to send up his bantering smile.
"Good beginnings make good endings," said I; "what we haven't need of, lads, we can carry aboard again. The longboat's back won't ache, be sure of it." All this, I say, was done when the moon showed us the island like a great barren rock rising up sheer from the sea.
The pilot boat had been sent back to Sunday Island, the ship's boat was in the water, and was supposed to have been made fast astern by the crew. At break of day the pilot came on deck, and on taking a look round, he saw that the longboat had got away and was drifting towards Rabbit Island. He roared down the companion to Captain Taylor, "Your longboat's got adrift, and is off to Rabbit Island."
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