“Quick! all of you: lie down!” shouted the mate, excitedly, and he set the example.
“What is it, what’s the matter?” cried Panton.
“You’re to hold me,” said Oliver. “I’ve got hold of a whale, and it will tug me off the rock. Help, please, it’s cutting into my arm.”
“Never mind the fish,” cried the mate, angrily. “Don’t you see? Lie close all of you and they may pass us.”
He pointed as he spoke, and the little party now saw the cause of his excitement, for half a mile away, just coming round a point masked by a clump of cocoa palms, was a large canoe with outrigger, upon which three or four men were perched so as to help balance their vessel, which, crowded with blacks, was literally racing along a short distance from the reef, impelled by its wide-spreading matting sail.
“Friends,” said Panton, excitedly.
“If we were on board our brig and at sea,” said the mate, “but as a shipwrecked party they are foes.”