After that visit to Pitcairn, I could see why everyone who has been there wants to go back. Maybe I’ll go there again some day myself. I have heard since that Frances McCoy finally got off the island in a boat which took the natives three years to build, to America. She landed in Seattle, where she began to study medicine as she had dreamed. However, within three months of the time she landed in Seattle she died a pitiful death of brain fever. She was not accustomed to the noise and confusion and strange life of cities and it struck her down before she could attain her ambition of mercy.
16
The clouds came down and the sea reached up to meet them and out of their travail a sea monster was born!
I had settled down for a snooze on the mizzen hatch, bored by the monotony of a dull tropic afternoon, when Father’s voice shook the air with a “Clew up the topsails! Down with the foremain and mizzen!”
“Aye aye!” came from the mate on watch. “Aye aye!” echoed the sailors forward, as they ran to their places at the several ropes. We were taken “aback.” Slap! smack! went the sails against the rigging as the wind caught them from the opposite tack.
“Sheet in the jibs!” Father took the wheel from the helmsman and sent him forward to lend a hand on the halyards. I leaped up the ladder to the poop deck. The wind had begun to hum with a vicious steadiness from leeward. The sky darkened over with rioting grey clouds and the sea became a funereal black.
Over the roar of the wind and the falling sails, Father called:
“Waterspout to leeward!”