“Boat is stove in, for'ard!” cried one of my men, and indeed that was very evident, for the water was pouring in—she had carried away her stem, and started all the forward timber ends.
To have attempted to stop the inrush of water effectually would have been waste, of time, but I called to my men to come aft as far as they could, so as to let the boat's head lift; and whilst two of them kept on baling, the others shook out the reef in our lug, and the boat went along at a great speed, half full of water as she was, and down by the stern. The water still rushed in, and I told the Samoans to move the baskets of heads farther aft, so that the men could bale out quicker.
“We'll be all right in ten minutes, boys,” I cried to my men, as I steered; “I'll run her slap up on the beach by the church.”
Presently one of the Samoans touched my arm, and said in a whisper that we were surrounded by a swarm of sharks. He had noticed them, he said, before the boat struck.
“They smell the bloodied water,” he muttered.
A glance over the side filled me with terror. There were literally scores of sharks, racing along on both sides of the boat, some almost on the surface, others some feet down, and the phosphorescence of the water added to the horror of the scene. At first I was in hopes that they were harmless porpoises, but they were so close that some of them could have been touched with one's hand. Most fortunately I was steering with a rudder, and not a steer oar. The latter would have been torn out of my hands by the brutes—the boat have broached-to and we all have met with a horrible death. Presently one of the weeping women noticed them, and uttered a scream of terror.
“Le malie, le malic!” (“The sharks, the sharks!”) she cried.
My crew then became terribly frightened, and urged me to let them throw the baskets of heads overboard, but the Samoans became frantic at the suggestion, all of them weeping.
So we kept on, the boat making good progress, although we could only keep her afloat by continuous baling of the ensanguined water. In five minutes more my heart leapt with joy—we were in shallow water, only a cable length from Salimu beach, and then in another blinding rain squall we ran on shore, and our broken bows ploughed into the sand, amid the cries of some hundreds of natives, many of whom held lighted torches.
All of us in the boat were so overwrought that for some minutes we were unable to speak, and it took a full bottle of brandy to steady the nerves of my crew and myself. I shall never forget that night run across Fâgaloa Bay.