The two lads crouched, drenched through, on the bottom of the canoe, while the Kanaka boys paddled furiously. Giant waves, true mountains of water, hung above them threatening to engulf them, but the canoe rode them with what appeared incredible buoyancy.
How long this kept up, neither Jack nor Billy ever knew. It seemed like years. Dizzy and sick from the riotous motions of the canoe as it swung wildly between sea and sky, they lost all count of everything. But the struggle was nearing its end.
Suddenly a giant comber caught up the dugout, turtled it skyward and then rushed it sickeningly down. It lifted the craft over the reef and into the open sea. For one instant it hesitated and then spun round in the trough of the sea. The next moment it was smashed into slivers against the reef while an avalanche of waters carried all its occupants down into the depths before they had time to even shout their consternation. More dead than alive, Jack shot back to the surface again. Not far from him was a projecting point of the reef. He managed somehow to crawl to it, but as he made his progress along the lower lying portions of the coral wall he was swept time and again by waves and compelled to exert all his strength to avoid being dashed off. At length, with hands cut and bleeding from the rough coral, and his clothing in shreds, he reached his refuge and was almost immediately joined there, to his great relief, by Anai and his comrade, who had rescued Billy Raynor.
But it was a miserable refuge they had found. The projecting point of rock hardly gave room for all of them, and frequently waves swept over it. At all times they were choked and blinded with spray.
“Well, this is the limit,” declared Billy. “Never again for me so far as pearl hunting is concerned.”
“Nor for me either,” said Jack. “Still, it was our fault for not watching the weather.”
“How long will the storm last, Anai, do you think?” inquired Billy, a little later.
The Kanaka boy looked at the weather with a practiced eye.
“Him get better soon,” he said. “Him not bad storm.”
“Not a bad storm!” exclaimed Jack. “Well, if this isn’t one, I never want to see one.”