Then, quite suddenly, the jumping, tumbling sea began to subside, and through the darkness we heard the skipper of one of the American whalers hail us.
'What are you, going to do, Captain Hayes? I guess we're in a pretty tight place. I'd try to tow out if I could see the hole in the wall. We're going to get it mighty hot presently. It's coming on fast.'
'That's so,' Hayes replied, with a laugh; 'but we can't stop it. And, say, look here, captain, as you fellows are lying further out than I am, you might each start a cask of oil to run when the seas begin to break. It won't help you much, but it will me.'
The whale-ship captain laughed, and said that he was afraid that his six hundred barrels of oil would start themselves if the sea began to break—meaning that his ship would go ashore.
The previous heavy rolling of the brig had nearly made a wreck of my trade room, for everything had been jerked off the shelves, and cases of liquor, powder, cartridges, concertinas and women's hats, etc., were lying burst open on the floor; so, calling a couple of native sailors to help me, I was just going below, when I heard Captain Hayes's sharp tones calling out to our officers to stand by.
From the north-west there came a peculiar droning, humming sound, mingled with a subdued crashing and roaring of the mountain forest, which lay about a quarter of a mile astern of us—the noise one hears when a mighty bush fire is raging in Australia, and a sudden gust of wind adds to its devastation—and then in another half a minute the brig spun round like a top to the fury of the first blast, and we were enveloped in a blinding shower of leaves, twigs and salty spray. She brought up to her anchors with a jerk that nearly threw everyone off his feet, and then in an incredibly short time the sea again began to rise, and the brig to plunge and take water in over the bows and waist—not heavy seas, but sheets of water nipped off by the force of the wind and falling on the decks in drenching showers.
Just as I was hurrying below, Hayes stopped me.
'Don't bother about the trade room. Get all the arms and ammunition you can ready for the boats. I'm afraid that we won't see this through. The blubber-hunters are all right; but we are not. We have to ride short. I can't give her more than another ten fathoms of cable—there are a lot of coral boulders right aft. If the wind hauls round a couple of points we may clear them, but it isn't going to; and we'll get smothered in the seas in another ten minutes—if the cables don't part before then.'
Seldom was a ship sent to destruction in such a short time as the Leonora. I had not been five minutes in the main cabin before a heavy sea came over the bows with a crash, carried away the for'ard deckhouse, which it swept overboard, killed four people, and poured into the cabin. I heard Hayes call out to the mate to give her another ten fathoms of cable, and then, assisted by half a dozen native women and a young Easter Island half-caste girl named Lalia, wife to one of the five white traders, began packing our arms and ammunition into two or three strong trade boxes. In another chest we stowed the ship's chronometers, Hayes's instruments, and all the charts upon which we could lay hands, together with about six thousand silver dollars in bags, the ship's books and some silver plate. The women, who were the officers' and traders' wives, were fearfully terrified; all but Lalia, who was a fine, courageous girl. Taking a cutlass from the rack in the cabin she stood over them; and, cursing freely in French, English, Spanish and whalers' language, threatened to murder every one of them if they did not hurry. We got the first box of arms safely up the companion, and Hayes saw it lowered into one of the traders' whale-boats, which was standing by under the stern. Then, as a tremendous crashing sea came over the waist, all the women but Lalia bolted and left us alone. Lalia laughed.
'That's the long-boat gone, sir; and all those Pleasant Islands women are drown, I hope—the damned savage beasts, I hate them.'