“Avast pulling, lads. We'll give him a parting shot together. Maybe we might drop a bullet into him. Get out the other five Sniders, Harvey; the Winchesters are no use at such a range.”
The boat was swung broadside on, and the two white men and five natives fired a volley together. Tessa stood up on the after-thwart, and watched through Atkin's glasses; the heavy bullets all fell short.
“Never mind, lads,” said Atkins. “God Almighty ain't going to let those two men escape. Now, Harvey, what about ourselves? What is it to be? Ponape, or the nearest land?”
“The nearest land, tor Gawd's sake,” sobbed Jessop. “I ain't got long to live, and for Christ's sake don't chuck me overboard to be chawed up by the sharks like a piece o' dead meat.”
“Man,” said a faint voice beside him, “ye're ower particular, I'm thinking. And it would be a verra hungry shark that wad hae the indecency to eat such a puir chicken-hearted creature as yourself, ye miserable cur! Are ye no ashamed to be whining before the two lasses?”
It was the dying Morrison who spoke. Tessa bent over him. “Do not be angry with him,” she whispered, “he is in great agony.”
“Ay, I hae no doubt he's in verra great pain; but ye see, my dear, I'm auld and crotchety, and the creature's verra annoying wi' his whining and moaning and fearsome blasphemy.”
Tessa, who knew as well as the brave old man knew himself that he was dying, placed her soft hand on his rugged brow in silent sympathy; he looked up at her with a cheerful smile.
Harvey and Atkins consulted. Ponapé was between four and five hundred miles distant, a long voyage for a deeply-laden boat without a sail. Two hundred miles to the westward was Pikirami Atoll (the “Greenwich Island” of the charts), and a hundred and eighty miles north of that was Nukuor, the most southerly of the vast archipelago of the Caroline Islands.
“I don't know what is best for us to do, Atkins,” said the trader. “At this time of the year we can count upon every night being such as it was last night, perhaps a great deal worse; and we must either turn tail to the squalls or put out a sea anchor and drift. This means that we'll make no headway at all at night time, and be set steadily to the westward, and out of our course for Ponapé. If we had a sail it would be right enough, as we could lay up for there—within a couple of points anyway. But we have no sail, and willing as the men are to pull, it will be terribly exhausting.”