At this juncture the doctor went forward to reconnoiter, and while we still slipped at no mean speed through the water—quite without apprehension because of the considerable distance still intervening between the yacht and the apparently steep-to-shore—the excited order came booming back to "Keep her off! Keep her off!"
Here was a properly phrased nautical order at last, and Perkins grinned appreciatively as he spun the wheel up, mechanically muttering "Keep 'er off, Sir." An instant later the Commodore, dashing wildly aft, cleared the cockpit rail at a bound, and, knocking the surprised Perkins backward with his shoulder, began climbing up the spokes of the wheel like a monkey as he threw it hard down. The yacht wavered for an instant, as though confused by the unwonted treatment, and then, with a slatting of canvas and banging of blocks, came up into the wind and paid off on the other tack just in time to avoid the thrust of a jutting point of coral. We felt fully justified in setting aside our volunteer pilot and finding our own anchorage after that.
Regarding which it might be in order to explain that the shores of Pago Pago Bay, though the volcanic walls themselves shelve off abruptly to a great depth, are fringed with a hundred-yard-wide table of coral which rises to within three or four feet of its surface all the way around. The outer edge of the latter drops off sheer to deep water, and anywhere beyond is good anchorage. The doctor, of course, knew of this coral bank but had miscalculated its position. When its jagged brown rim suddenly leered up at him through the green water, quite correctly anticipating that if the yacht drove in upon it she might do herself harm, he very naturally shouted to "Keep her off!" which order the man at the wheel, quite as naturally, interpreted to mean "Keep her off the wind." This he did, with the result that he was heading her more directly than ever onto the reef, when the Commodore, catching the lay of things and realizing the danger of complicating an already hopelessly mixed situation by giving orders, sprang to the wheel himself, threw the yacht up into the wind and avoided by a scant dozen feet the jagged edge of the coral bank.
[CHAPTER XII]
IN PAGO PAGO BAY
In the settlement of the Samoan imbroglio in the late nineties by the partition of the group between Germany and the United States—Great Britain, the third party to the controversy having been granted compensatory rights in the Tongas and Solomons—America, for all practical purposes, had much the best of the bargain. Germany entered into actual possession of the two largest islands of the group, Upolou and Savaii, leaving the United States to do the same with Tutuila and the Manuas. The American government, however, contented itself with a naval station at Pago Pago, Tutuila, and the exercise of a mild protectorate over the natives of the rest of that island. Germany's rich and beautiful islands, after proving little more than a costly colonial experiment, passed out of her hands forever at the end of the late war. The establishment of a naval station at Pago Pago has placed the United States, strategically, in the strongest position in western Polynesia.
The bay of Pago Pago is unquestionably the finest harbour in the whole of the Pacific. In form it is not unlike a fat letter "L," of which the shorter line is the entrance and the longer, inclining slightly inward, the bay proper. Ages ago what is now the harbour was undoubtedly a huge crater occupying the centre of the island of Tutuila. One day the water must have broken through into the lava, causing an explosion which, in addition to settling the island a thousand feet or so, blew out a slice of the crater's rim and dropped it out of sight somewhere in the deep sea. The place where the slice blew out is the present entrance to the harbour, and it is wide and deep enough to hold the Capitol at Washington without seriously interfering with navigation.
So completely landlocked is the harbour, and so smooth are its waters in all weathers, that from anywhere in the inner bay—except for the tropical vegetation which clothes the mountain sides—it might pass for a Swiss lake. The high walls of the ancient crater cut off the rays of the morning and evening sun, and the velvety green of the wonderful tropic tapestry which covers them, reflecting scarcely any light and heat, makes the harbour several degrees cooler than any other Pacific island of similar latitude, either north or south of the equator. At noon of the warmest day of the month which the Lurline remained in the harbour the temperature was 79°, Fahrenheit. The coolest day was 74° at noon and 72° at midnight, while the water held around an even 80° all of the time.