The poor beggars were working like Trojans, their naked bodies streaming with perspiration, as Niâbon held out to each of them half a pannikinful of raw gin, which was tossed off at one swallow. Then both she and Lucia, who was now on the reef, began digging the promised tobacco out of a case with sheath knives.
“Don't bother to count the sticks!” I cried, as the boat made a sudden move and was kept going for nearly a dozen feet. “Toss out about half of the case and be ready to jump on board and get under cover.”
At last, with a yell of satisfaction from the natives, the stern post was seen to be over the ledge of the coral, and then with one final effort the boat went into the water with a splash like a sperm whale “breaching.”
“Now, in with everything,” I shouted to Tematau, as one glance showed me the two boats, now less than half a mile away, coming along at what seemed to me to be infernal speed.
Tematau and the natives made a rush at the boxes of stores, bundles of sails, water breakers, and everything else, and tumbled them on board anyhow, Lucia and Niâbon taking the lighter articles from them and dropping them into the cabin, so as to give us more deck room, whilst I ran up the jib, and big Tepi the mainsail.
“Take all the loose tobacco there, my friends,” cried Niâbon to the fishermen, who with panting bosoms stood looking at us as if we had all gone mad, “and here are the four bottles of rom.”
One of them sprang to the side of the boat just as I, feeling every moment that I should drop with exhaustion, pushed her off with an oar into deep water. And then we heard a chorus of yells and cries from the two boats, as we eased off the jib and main sheets, and Niâbon put her before the wind. Then crack! crack! and two bullets went through the mainsail just below the peak, and I heard Tolly's voice shouting to me to bring to again.
“Come aft here, you two,” I cried to Tepi and his mate; “get out the guns, quick. Sit down in the cabin and fire, one on each side of me.”
I did not speak a moment too soon, for the leading boat suddenly lowered her sail, took in all her oars but two, and began firing at us at less than three hundred yards, and every bullet hit us somewhere, either in the hull or aloft. Then they took to their oars again, and I saw that unless we could knock some of them over she—and those in the second boat as well—would be aboard of us in a few minutes, for there was now but little wind and the strength of the ebb tide was fast slackening.
Tematau and Tepi each fired two or three shots in quick succession, but missed, and then a very heavy bullet struck the side of the coaming of the steering-well in which I was seated, glanced off and ploughed along the deck, and the second boat now began firing into us with breechloading rifles of some sort.