"On shore with the traders, sir; all the boats but one are stove in on the beach, and he can't get out again."
"All right, lads, don't attempt to come out again; but wait a minute." Then turning to me, "You must go ashore now in this boat. She has not many in her; and if her head is kept right into the break between the mountains she'll run up into the mangroves."
But I said I would take my chance with the ship. I was a good swimmer, and in that time of danger, even despair, I could not leave the Captain.
He pressed my hand silently, then called out, "All right, men, give way, the supercargo stays with me and the ship"; one dash of the oars, a wailing cry, a shout which out-toned it, and the boat disappeared, as if swallowed up by the darkness or the deep.
We were not clustered together aft. Those of the crew that had stood by the ship were hanging on to the main rigging. The Captain, who had hitherto intended cutting away both masts at once, told me he fancied the ship was straining and plunging less, and that he would only cut away as a last resource.
Suddenly he bent his glance at the hawser that was made fast to the Europa, and then pointed over to the seething water under our stern. I saw we were almost over a huge coral boulder, which every now and then showed itself bare.
"By ——! those fellows on board the Europa are paying out the hawser. We were fifty feet from that rock when the hawser was made fast and had a strain on it, and now it's right under her stern. Can any of you see the whaler's cabin lights?"
The men looked through the blinding mists of spray that flew in our faces, and stung like whip-lashes when the brig was lifted high on a towering sea. The hawser tightened like an iron bar, but suddenly fell as if it had parted or been cast off.
"The cursed dogs!" said the Captain, opening and shutting his hands spasmodically, "they are paying out, and letting us go to the devil!"
And now a tremendous sea swept along and broke just as it reached abreast the mainmast. We felt the brig strike. Sea after sea tumbled in over the bulwarks, and a solid sheet of water broke over us in the main rigging, sweeping three or four men overboard.