"Leave her, Johnny, leave her,
It's time for us to leave her."
"To fa,[11] old ship!" called Jack. "The luck's against you. Kismet, always Kismet!"
"Yes, the kyards is stackin' up against you, an' like many another clean-strain gent, you bucks against them without weakenin'. Finally, you cashes in, back to the wall, boots on an' your gun empty. Old Ocmulgee, I looks towards you, you're dyin' game." Thus Broncho.
It was a melancholy sight as, lying on the swell about half a cable's length off, they watched for the end.
She was now in flames fore and aft. Every rope was a thread of fire. Even where they lay to windward they could hear it roaring and hissing as it wrapped the poor old barque in its furious toils.
The sea sparkled in the reflection. The smoke fell away to leeward in a huge bank of black, blotting out the stars.
The faces of the boat's crew showed red and yellow in the glare of the fiery blast—Tari's sad and downcast, Lobu's sullen and indifferent, Jim's wide-eyed, the cowboy's keen and interested, and Jack's dreary but resolute.
In silence they watched the end, each wrapped up in his own thoughts.
Tari wistfully wondered if he would ever see his beloved island home again, with its breadfruit trees and cocoanut palms, its surf-beaten shores and rocky headlands, its sandy inlets and crystal streams; and not least, its light-hearted, flower-decked maidens. He was weary and worn with this tragic voyage, tired of this buffeting by the Fates about the rough world, and longed desperately for his own paepae-hae once more.
Jim, who had never known a paepae-hae, whose only home had been a ship's foc's'le, whose playground had been that rough one the wide world, recalled tales of open-boat experiences with a feeling half of dread for the future, half of excited anticipation, the glamour and fascination of uncertain fortune making itself felt even in his small but romantic breast.