As I considered this the thought of the trawl net which the skipper had brought along for the purpose of dredging up the pearl-oysters occurred to me, and I instantly decided that it might, with a little ingenuity, be converted into an excellent boarding netting. It was made of extra stout hemp line, to resist the cutting action of the oyster shells over which it was proposed to be dragged, and also to bring up a good heavy load without bursting, and I at once recognised that if there was enough of it to trice up all round the schooner—and I believed there was—it might serve to keep the natives off our decks long enough to enable us to give them so severe a punishing as to cool their ardour effectually and ultimately beat them off. The idea was too good not to be utilised at once; and I gave instructions to have the net immediately routed out and brought on deck. It was a big, heavy affair, and it took the eight of us the best part of half an hour to clear it out of the sail-room and get it on deck; but when at length we had done so I at once saw that, with a certain amount of cutting and contriving, it might be made to serve its new purpose very excellently: and forthwith all hands of us fell upon it, and by eight bells in the afternoon watch had converted it into an exceedingly efficient boarding net. Then we triced it up, and felt that at last we were ready for whatever the fates—and the natives—might have in store for us.
Meanwhile the jollyboat still lay abandoned upon the beach, and no sign of her crew or of the skipper and his two companions had been seen; nor had the strictest scrutiny, with the aid of the ship’s telescope, revealed any indication of natives ashore: in fact, so far as appearances alone were concerned, the island might have been uninhabited. But the continued absence of our shipmates, now prolonged far beyond all reasonable limits, left no doubt in any of our minds that something very seriously wrong had happened to them; and but for the circumstance that we were in complete ignorance as to what that happening really was, and the hope that some of them at least might still be alive, I would at once have got the schooner under way and gone to sea. But to do that was impossible while their fate was still in doubt; for not even to ensure our own safety against the attack that we were all convinced was impending could we do that which would amount to the abandonment of possibly living white men to the mercy of the savages.
With the tricing up and securing of the boarding netting our preparations for the defence of the schooner were completed to the best of our ability; and now all that remained was for us to sit down and passively await events, which, in the present case, meant an attack by the savages at any moment after darkness had fallen sufficiently to conceal their movements. But, that we might be as fully prepared as possible, I gave instructions for the advancement of the supper hour, so that we might partake of that meal while there was still light enough to enable us to see our surroundings; and after that we busied ourselves about a general straightening up of the decks and the removal of all unnecessary hamper, in order that, if fight we must, we might at least fight with clear decks.
Fortunately for us the night fell fine and clear, with brilliant starlight which enabled us to see all round the ship for a distance of about a couple of hundred yards; but inshore of us the shadow of the island lay jet-black upon the surface of the water, completely hiding all evidence of movement in that direction, even when I attempted to probe the blackness with the night glass. Therefore we were obliged to trust quite as much to our ears as to our eyes for warning of the approach of an enemy; but even they did not help us much, for the island was but a small one, and the thunder of the surf upon its weather shore, borne to us with almost startling distinctness, mingled with the sough of the wind among the trees and the lap of the ripples alongside, making with these a combination of sound that effectually screened any such movement as the launching of a canoe or the distant dip of paddles. I foresaw that this was likely to be a wakeful night for me, for with such a heavy load of responsibility upon my young shoulders I could not possibly have slept, even upon a bed of down. I therefore instructed the men to bring their beds on deck and snatch such rest as might come to them, while I kept a lookout. Also I made a point of striking the ship’s bell regularly every half-hour, in the faint hope that if the savages could be brought to realise that we were upon the alert they might, after all, decide not to risk an attack.
With incredible slowness the laggard moments passed; the second dog-watch came to an end; and then, still more slowly, as it seemed to my impatience, first one, then two, three, four, and so on up to eight bells of the first watch were tolled out, and still there were no signs of the enemy. And all this while I was continuously padding round the decks in a pair of old felt-soled slippers, which effectually silenced my footsteps upon the planking, pausing for a moment at every half-dozen steps to peer anxiously but in vain into the shadow of the island for some indication of movement. Finally four bells of the middle watch arrived, and their passage was duly recorded by the strokes of the ship’s bell. Meanwhile the stress of the day’s anxiety, combined with my continuous and monotonous perambulation of the deck, and no doubt assisted by the soft coolness of the offshore breeze, laden with the odours of earth and vegetation, and the constant booming sound of the distant surf, was beginning to tell upon me; my jarred nerves had become steady, my breathing had become deep and regular, my limbs were growing weary, and my eyelids began occasionally to droop; in short, I was beginning to feel fatigued and in need of sleep.
This, then, was evidently the moment at which to attempt to snatch a little rest, and I was debating within myself which of the men I should call to relieve me, or rather which of them I could best trust to keep an alert lookout, when I fancied I caught, just for an instant out of the corner of my eye, a faint, silvery gleam, as of the phosphorescence of disturbed water, deep in the heart of the darkest shadow in the direction of the beach. I looked more closely, and presently saw again, this time quite distinctly, the rippling, moon-like gleam of water disturbed as it might be by the launching of a boat or a canoe. Yes, there was no mistake about it, there was undoubtedly a movement of some sort in there; and even as I came to this conclusion I saw the thing repeated twice, thrice, five or six times, with spaces of a few yards between. That was enough; at last the savages were on the move, and in a moment my fatigue fell from me like a garment, and I was once again the incarnation of alertness. Without making a sound I glided along the deck in my old soft slippers, and, laying my hand lightly upon each sleeper’s shoulder, murmured in his ear: “The enemy is under way! Go to your station as noiselessly as possible, taking your gun with you; and do not fire until I give the word.”
By the time that I had awakened my little band, and had seen each man at his proper station, it had become perfectly apparent that eight canoes were stealing slowly out toward us from the beach; for although they were still enveloped in deep shadow, and were being paddled so cautiously that not the faintest suspicion of a sound could be heard, it was possible for us to see distinctly, in the midst of the blackness, eight separate points of disturbance, each indicated by short, wavering lines of phosphorescent light, marking the slight ripple created by the gentle passage of some object through the water, in addition to which an occasional small luminous swirl indicated the stealthy dip of a paddle in the water at infrequent intervals. The excessive caution with which they were making their approach seemed to suggest an intention on the part of the savages to get as near as possible to the schooner unobserved, with probably a quick dash at the end to cover the last hundred feet or so of water.
Crouching low behind the bulwarks, and levelling the ship’s night glass over the rail, I kept the instrument slowly sweeping athwart the advancing line of craft, and at length saw eight large canoes gradually take shape as they drew imperceptibly out of the heart of the deepest shadow. I endeavoured to count the number of occupants, but soon found this to be impossible in the dim light. I made a rough guess, however, and came to the conclusion that there were at least twenty in each canoe; it was evident therefore that, despite our superiority in the matter of weapons, there was a desperate struggle in store for us. I waited patiently until the canoes had approached us near enough to enable us to distinguish the loom of them with the unaided eye, and then, springing up on the wheel grating, I suddenly hailed:
“Canoes ahoy! Keep off there! If you attempt to come any nearer I will open fire upon you.”
A complete cessation of paddling immediately followed my hail. Possibly the savages were a trifle chagrined to discover that we were on the alert, or perhaps they did not fully understand what I had said—although I did not believe that, for most of the South Sea natives knew enough of English to enable an Englishman to make himself understood. Be that as it may, they paused long enough to enable me to call to the little band of defenders a final instruction.