I slipped off the coat of years and was a boy on a pirate schooner, my hand on Long Tom, the brass gun, ready to fire if the cannibals pushed nearer in their canoes. Again I had trained my hand and eye so that I brought down the wild pigeon with my sling, and I outran the furious turtle on the beach. I dived under the reef into the cave where the freebooters had stored their ill-gotten treasure, and reveled in the bags of pieces of eight, and the bars of virgin gold. I thought of Silver, and sang:
“Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
“Mais vous êtes gai,” said Jean Moet. “Qu’est cela? You not drink wan bottle when I no look?”
At three o’clock in the afternoon the gale had almost died away. The sun was struggling to break through the lowering sky. McHenry and Kopcke were engaged in their usual bombast of personal achievement with women and drink, and I, to shut out their blague, was playing with Chocolat. Suddenly Kopcke broke off in a sentence and shouted to Moet, who was in the trade-room.
“Capitaine! Capitaine!” he called loudly through the window of the cabin. “There is a flood in air. Puahiohio! On deck! On deck!”
His voice vibrated with alarm, and Moet made three jumps and was at the wheel. He looked ahead, and I, too, saw, directly on the course we were steering, a convolute stem of water stretching from the sea to the sky. Well I knew what it was. I whirled McHenry around.
“Look!” I said, and pointed to the oncoming spectacle.
“A bloody waterspout!” yelled McHenry. “By cripes—here’s where we pay up!”
I heard the native passengers and the sailors forward shouting confusedly, and saw them throwing themselves flat on deck, where they held on to the hatch lashings and other stable objects. Moet, with a fierce oath, ordered the sailors to the halyards.