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Updated: May 17, 2025
As the surf-boat neared the shore, I heard voices behind me, and, turning round, beheld a sight which sent me completely back into the 1820 days. It was a band of gentlemen in black black from the crowns of their heads to the soles of their feet, with the exception of their lips and teeth and eyes. Here was the Simon Pure in very truth.
We're an inside post, you see, and usually we don't get a call unless the sea's so high that the Cliff House station can't launch their boat. So, you see, we don't go out much, but when we DO, it means business with a great big B. Now, this here, you see," continued the Captain, rolling back the sliding doors of the house, "is the surf-boat.
The freshets had uptorn from the banks the tallest trees, which in places formed a timber-floor; and the surf-boat gallantly charged, till she leaked, the huge trunks, over which she had often to be lifted. Nothing would be easier than to clear away these obstacles; a few pounds of gun-cotton would remove snags and sawyers, and dredging by boats would do the rest.
During the dry season it had been remarkably good, but now it began to change for the worse; and soon it will become impassable for three or four days at a time. My surf-boat, when coming across it, shipped three seas. I stored my goods in the surf-boat, and set out in our big canoe early next morning.
Hamilton sat in the stern of the surf-boat, humming a song to himself; but he felt awfully solemn, though in his pocket reposed a commission sealed redly and largely on parchment and addressed to: "Our well-beloved Patrick George Hamilton, Lieutenant, of our 133rd 1st Royal Hertford Regiment. Seconded for service in our 9th Regiment of Houssas Greeting...."
He stood there, recovering his breath, for a moment or two, peering up towards the inhospitable silence above him. But still he saw no sign of life. No word or challenge was flung down at him. Then, after a moment's thought, he lay flat on the grill and deliberately pushed the surf-boat off into the darkness. He wanted no more of it. He knew, now, there could be no going back.
As I gazed, the scene was rendered still more real by the approach from seaward of a great surf-boat, similar to the surf-boats that brought the settlers from their respective ships to the shore. Such boats are still used at the port to land goods and also passengers, when the breakers are too high to admit of their being landed in small boats at the wooden pier.
How did you happen to choose it?" "Well, you see," answered the Captain, leaning against the smooth white flank of the surf-boat, his hands in his pockets, "I'm lying low just now. I got into a scrape down at Libertad, in Mexico, that made talk, and I'm waiting for that to die down some. You see, it was this way."
Messieurs Allan and Plisson, who were floating down in a surf-boat, gave me the news that the steam-launch Effuenta had at last succumbed in the struggle for life. I landed at Akromási, a village where the true bamboo-cane grows, and found the soil to be a grey sandy clay; there were many 'women's washings' near the settlement.
They said his surf-boat had reached the steamer, had taken on board a load of soldiers, some eight or ten, and had started back through the surf, when on the bar a heavy breaker upset the boat, and all were lost except the boy who pulled the bow-oar, who clung to the rope or painter, hauled himself to the upset boat, held on, drifted with it outside the breakers, and was finally beached near a mile down the coast.
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