“Prison on one side, so to say, and an open road on the other.
“Well, there we were, the sun getting higher in the sky, and the Kanakas sure to be beating the bushes after us as soon as they found we’d broke loose, but we didn’t say a word on the matter, only went on crawling till we’d reached the last of the trees and thick stuff. From there the coral ran naked to the break in the reef.
“We hadn’t more than reached so far when the hellnation of a hullabaloo broke out behind us, and we thought they’d found we’d escaped, but that wasn’t so, as we discovered in a minute, for chancing to look towards the opening, we saw the top canvas of a schooner away beyond the northernmost pierhead. We reckoned she was two or three mile off, and, crawling along the coral on our bellies till we’d got a clear view of the sea, there she was, right enough, making for the break, the light wind spilling and filling her canvas. She hadn’t much more than steerage way.
“Then we looked back. We couldn’t see the village because of the trees, but we could see the Mary Waters lying there at anchor out in the lagoon, and canoes all about her and chaps swarming on board of her.
“‘See that,’ said Heffernan, ‘all that hullabaloo wasn’t about us. I doubt if they’ve found we’ve escaped yet.’
“‘What are they doing round the schooner?’ says I.
“‘Lord knows,’ says he, ‘but we’ll soon see.’
“We did. Those devils were used to the game of sinking ships and slaughtering sailor men; they’d most likely got all the trade goods they wanted off the schooner by this, and now we saw them passing a tow rope from the bow to one of the canoes and we heard the noise of the winch picking up the anchor chain.
“‘They’re not going to sink her at her moorings,’ said Heffernan, ‘too shallow. Look, they’re towing her to a deeper part of the lagoon.’
“That was so, and as we watched we saw she was getting deeper in the water even as she was towed; they must have begun the job of sinking her the minute the schooner was sighted, forgetting like fools that the chaps coming up would have been sure to sight her spars, or maybe risking even that rather than have the newcomers see the bloody work that had been done on deck.