“Ye durned thief!” cried Hiram, mad with rage at the villain for thus cheating us, and abandoning us to our fate there on that lone desert isle. “Whaar’s our treesor?”
“Guess ye’re ravin’, man,” bawled Captain Snaggs; and then, as if this ended the colloquy, he sang out to the hands forward to “Hoist away!”
We then noticed a slight commotion on board, as if some of our shipmates rebelled at the idea of leaving us behind, while they sailed homeward; but this intervention on our behalf was futile, for the skipper brandished his revolver, as we could easily see from the top of the cliff, to which we had now climbed, in order to make our voices better heard on board, and after a momentary pause the sails were let drop and hauled out, and the vessel began to make her way out of the bay.
The captain then called out to us, as if in bragging malice, “I’ve got every durned chest aboard! D’ye haar? Flinders an’ I brought ’em down to the beach last night when ye wer all caulkin’; an’ I guess ye air pretty well chiselled at last!—Thet’s quits fur the nigger’s ghost, an’ yer mutiny, an’ all! I reckon I’ve paid ye all out in full, ye durned skellywags!”
Those were the last words, in all human probability, that Captain Snaggs ever uttered in this mortal life.
There had been slight rumblings underground all the morning of that day, as if nature were warning us of further volcanic disturbance throughout the Galapagian archipelago; and now, of a sudden, an immense tidal wave, that seemed sixty feet high at the least, rolled into the little harbour like a huge wall, filling up the opening between the cliffs on either hand up to the very tops of these, as it came sweeping inward from the outside sea.
The next instant, the Denver City, with all on board her, disappeared, the wave sweeping back outwards with its prey, leaving the bottom of the harbour bare for over a mile, where all previously had been deep water.
The sea came back once more, though the tidal wave was not so high as before.
And still once again—ebb and flow, ebb and flow.
It was awful!