“Lay out to your oars, then, my lads,” cries the skipper, steering as he has been advised. “Pull your best, all!”
A superfluous command that, for already they are straining every nerve, all awake to the danger drawing nigh. Never in their lives were they in greater peril, never threatened by a fate more fearful than that impending now. For, as the canoes come nearer, it can be seen that there are only men in them; men of fierce aspect, every one of them armed.
“Nary woman nor chile!” mutters Seagriff, as though talking to himself. “Thet means war, an’ the white feathers stickin’ up out o’ thar skulls, wi’ thar faces chalked like circus clowns! War to the knife, for sartin!”
Still other, if not surer, evidences of hostility are the spears bristling above their heads, and the slings in their hands, into which they are seen slipping stones to be ready for casting. Their cries, too, shrilling over the water, are like the screams of rapacious birds about to pounce on prey which they know cannot escape them.
And now the canoes are approaching mid-channel, closing in from either side en échelon, and the boat must pass between them. Soon she has some of them abeam, with others on the bows. It is running the gauntlet, with apparently a very poor chance of running it safely. The failure of an oar-stroke, a retarding whiff of wind, may bring death to those in the gig, or capture, which is the same. Yet they see life beyond, if they can but reach it,—life in a breeze, the “sough” on the water, of which Seagriff spoke. It is scarcely two cables’ length ahead. Oh, that it were but one! Still they have hope, as the old sealer shouts encouragingly, “We may git into it yet. Pull, boys; pull wi’ might an’ main!”
His words spur them to a fresh effort, and the boat bounds on, the oars almost lifting her out of the water. The canoes abeam begin to fall astern, but those on the bows are forging dangerously near, while the savages in them, now on their feet, brandish spears and wind their slings above their heads. Their
fiendish cries and furious gestures, with their ghastly chalked faces, give them an appearance more demoniac than human.
A stone is slung and a javelin cast, though both fall short. But will the next? They will soon be at nearer range, and the gig’s people, absolutely without means of protection, sit in fear and trembling. Still the rowers, bracing hearts and arms, pull manfully on. But Captain Gancy is appalled as another stone plashes in the water close to the boat’s side, while a third, striking the mast, drops down among them.
“Merciful Heaven!” he exclaims, despondingly, as he extends a sheltering arm over the heads of his dear ones. “Is it thus to end? Are we to be stoned to death?”