'Don't be alarmed about that, Mr. Wallis. No one will be drowned. Even if she fills before the holes are discovered, she can't sink, for there's only six or eight feet of water between her keel and the bottom--she'll take the ground nice and easy.'
Then he struck a match and lit his pipe, and as he puffed out the first whiffs of smoke he turned and shook his fist at the vanishing land.
'Good-bye to you, Mr. Bully Hayes. I feel a bit better now than I did an hour ago. I'm even with you, anyway. Mr. Wallis, you lie down and sleep. We shall call you when we are running into the fresh-water river at Alofi.'
'And after, Bill?'
'For Fiji, I think, sir. We can run down there in two days easily. Plenty of ships there, sir, an' we'll be in Australia in another month or two.'
Exhausted and excited with the events of the past few hours, Tom lay down in the stern sheets, and the whaleboat leapt and spun along in the darkness towards the scarcely discernible outline of Alofi Island.
CHAPTER XI
JACK AND HIS FATHER HEAR GOOD NEWS
Nearly eight months had come and gone since the captain of the Bandolier had left Port Kooringa, and in the quaint, old-fashioned dining-room of the house under the bluff Jack and his father were sitting--Mr. Wallis smoking his pipe and thinking, and Jack cleaning his gun. It was nearly sunset, and presently Kate Gorman entered.
'Shall yez have the lamps lit, sor?'