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Updated: October 6, 2025
So, having concluded that our sole chance for salvation lay in being picked up by the Abraham Lincoln's longboats, we had to take steps to wait for them as long as possible.
At first the Spaniards thought nothing of the few travel-worn Frenchmen who dragged their longboats and hoys up on the beach, and shot a wild bullock or two to keep body and soul together; but when the few grew to dozens, and the dozens to scores, and the scores to hundreds, it was a very different matter, and wrathful grumblings and mutterings began to be heard among the original settlers.
This defence was needed to protect the frames of the two new longboats, which were being put together, from the natives; and also, it would appear, from a few escaped convicts, "whom he had dismissed with threats, giving them a day's provision to carry them back to ye settlement."
The gigs, although they were of course of much smaller capacity than the longboats, and having fixed thwarts were not so adaptable for the purpose of temporarily receiving cargo, were nevertheless capable of being made very good use of, and in the afternoon they were brought alongside and loaded one after another, until all four of the ship's own gigs were as deep in the water as it was prudent to put them, when they also were dropped astern, leaving only the dinghy, and the gig of the Dolores, unutilised.
The sun shone brightly upon this animated scene of human activity, and broke and sparkled in colored light up in the rippling waves of the broad river. Hundreds of flags floated in the air; gondolas and longboats furrowed the waters; from boat and wharf joyous greetings of friends mingled with the song of the sailors.
Czerny's yacht lay, the picture of a ship, eastward in the offing. The longboats, twelve of them, and each loaded with its devil's crew, drifted round and round the master's ship; but never a man that went aboard from them. "The ship," said I, "is where many a good ship has gone before: a thousand fathoms down by yonder cruel reef.
At first the Spaniards thought nothing of the few travel-worn Frenchmen who dragged their longboats and hoys up on the beach, and shot a wild bullock or two to keep body and soul together; but when the few grew to dozens, and the dozens to scores, and the scores to hundreds, it was a very different matter, and wrathful grumblings and mutterings began to be heard among the original settlers.
Enormous sides of bacon were trailed in our wake, to the great satisfaction, I must say, of assorted sharks. While the Abraham Lincoln heaved to, its longboats radiated in every direction around it and didn't leave a single point of the sea unexplored. But the evening of November 4 arrived with this underwater mystery still unsolved.
The guests came in gigs, in launches, dinghies, and longboats came with laughter, came with rejoicing, for they were to dine with the señor of the open hand, Señor Howland, who always opened wine as they would open tins of beef. The gods never repaired more blithely to a Bacchanalian revel on Parnassus.
I must confess I was now very uneasy, and thought myself, including the late escape from the longboats, to have been in the most dangerous condition that ever I was in through my past life; for whatever ill circumstances I had been in, I was never pursued for a thief before; nor had I ever done anything that merited the name of dishonest or fraudulent, much less thievish.
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