“No,” I interrupted him emphatically; “your engineering knowledge should come in very usefully in helping Chips to use up those odds and ends of timber to the best advantage in completing the cradle. You are the man for me, Simpson, so jump now. Get aboard the schooner, open a box of ammunition, and bring me as many cartridges as you can carry, also another gun, in case anything goes wrong with this one. Then join me aboard the catamaran. And now, so long, you chaps; I’m off. Do your level best to finish off and wedge up as soon as possible; and I’ll do what I can to hinder the savages and keep them from landing here. Goodbye!” and, so saying, I turned and ran toward the spot where the catamaran lay with her bows hauled up on the beach.
Chapter Fifteen.
We escape by the Skin of our Teeth.
In a few minutes Sails joined me, with the extra gun and a biscuit tin full of cartridges; and between us we got the catamaran afloat, swung her round with her bows pointing seaward, and both jumped aboard. Then, while I seized the steering paddle, Simpson sprang to the main halyards and hoisted the big lateen sail, which at once filled, when we gathered headway and began to draw away from the shore, heading about south-west out of the bay; and as soon as the sail was fully set and the halyards belayed, Sails came aft and took the helm, while I gave the spare gun an overhaul before loading it.
As we drew out from under the lee of the island and began to feel the true breeze it became apparent that it was fast freshening up again, for we could see the heads of the seas bursting into little patches of white froth here and there, at which I was profoundly grateful; for I felt that a fresh breeze, dead in their teeth, was likely to hamper the progress of the savages quite as much as I could hope to do, and every minute of delay now was worth a gold mine to us. And that the advance of the savages was indeed being retarded by the rapidly freshening breeze soon became apparent, for we were fully three miles offshore when we at length made out the canoes, about two miles to leeward of us, heading straight in for the island.
Running rapidly down toward them, we soon neared them sufficiently to enable us to see that they were big, lumping craft, about sixty feet long by six or seven feet beam, each canoe being manned by about fifty savages, every mother’s son of whom was wielding a short, broad-bladed paddle as though his life depended upon it. Yet the canoes were not making very much headway, for they were unwieldy—looking craft, with long, high-peaked, overhanging bows, and sterns which seemed to catch and hold a good deal of wind, making the paddling of them to windward, especially against a heavy head sea, exceedingly hard work.
To do anything really effective with these craft, and especially to make good shooting in the heavy sea that was running, it was necessary to get to close quarters with them; I therefore directed Simpson to haul up two or three points to the northward, my intention being to pass the flotilla on their port beam, come to the wind as soon as we had passed them, cross their sterns, raking them as we passed, and then follow them, maintaining a steady fire all the way, and crowding them up to the northward as much as possible, so that they might not land in South-west Bay.
Our approach was greeted with yells of defiance from the crowded canoes, many of the occupants of which dropped their paddles, sprang to their feet, and hurled their long spears at us as we swept past them at a distance of some two hundred yards from the nearest canoe. They were experts in the hurling of spears, those savages; but it was no part of my plan to run the risk of getting either Simpson or myself hurt—two of us against some five hundred left no room for quixotic displays of daring; and we were careful to keep beyond the range of their spears, every one of which dropped harmlessly into the water at varying distances from us, the nearest of them all falling short by about thirty or forty fathoms. But if I was anxious that neither of us should be hurt, I was also anxious to avoid hurting the savages, as far as might be, my object being not so much to destroy them as to prevent them from landing on our island, if possible; and I thought that this might perhaps be done, and the savages compelled to retreat, by drilling their canoes so full of bullet holes that at least some of them would sink, when the remainder would become so crowded that it would be found impossible to continue paddling to windward—for I took it for granted that if one or two of their canoes sank, their crews would be picked up by the rest. Of course there was the risk that, in endeavouring to sink their canoes, I might wound or even kill a few savages; but that was their lookout, not mine.