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Staniford's voice called back. "Be quick." The heads rose and sank with the undulation of the water. The swift boat appeared to crawl. By the time it reached the place where they had been seen, the heads disappeared, and the men in the boat seemed to be rowing blindly about. The mate stood upright. Suddenly he dropped and clutched at something over the boat's side.
We fortunately had a couple of axes with us, which were of great service, and while Soper and I lent a hand Jack went down to collect shell-fish, which he did much more rapidly than we could, being well accustomed to it. The weather was so fine that we required only a very slight hut, which we formed partly of the boat's sails and partly of the boughs and stems of small trees.
The weather continued very foggy. He lay to all this night, which was very dark, with the boat's head to the northward. In the morning of the 19th, it began to rain; it cleared up in the afternoon, and the wind died away; still Mr. Purnell was convinced he was on soundings.
Just now the large ships-of-war which had been there were absent on their duty, though they were expected to return at any time. There was liable to be some unpleasantness at any time between Fort Pickens and Fort Barrancas; but everything was quiet just now. Flint had come on board of the Teaser with Christy, but none of the boat's crew had attended them.
Hundreds of canoes lay twenty deep along both sides of the Arangi, and each boy, with his box and bell, was clamoured for by scores of relatives and friends. In such height of excitement, Van Horn permitted no one on board. Melanesians, unlike cattle, are as prone to stampede to attack as to retreat. Two of the boat's crew stood beside the Lee-Enfields on the skylight.
Still there was a good deal of sea, and we had more difficulty than ever in keeping the boat from being swamped. We got the oars out, but we found that we had lost so much strength that we could scarcely use them. However, we managed to pull the boat's head round, and once more endeavoured to keep a course towards the north-east.
Laddie was digging a hole in the sand and trying to think of a new riddle, and Violet had just finished asking Russ a lot of questions when, all of a sudden, George Carr, the little boy whose dog had been bitten by the Sallie Growler, came running around a group of sand dunes, crying: "Oh, the boat's upset! The boat's upset, and all the men are spilled out! And the fish, too!
Burton was a splendid swimmer, there was no doubt about that, but his ordeal in the water had told on him severely. He grabbed Clancy's outstretched hand desparingly, and was assisted to climb over the bulwarks. Once aboard, he fell in a sprawl on the boat's bottom, breathing heavily. Hiram Hill got into the boat much more easily.
We tore the ends of our finger-nails off against the ship's side in trying to stop the boat's drift, and shouted despairingly again and again for help and a line; but our voices were drowned in the roar of the gale, there was no response, and the next sea carried us under the bark's counter.
He then inserted the iron keys which kept them in their place, and hoisted the sails. By this time the boat had drifted to the lower extremity of the island; so, bracing her sharp up, he stood away across the river. Tacking before he reached the swift channel, which flowed close in shore, he laid the boat's course up the stream.
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