Jones was only paddling easily, but for all that we bumped into a rock.
"Get into the bows, Glover, and shove her off," the Commander told me, and I scrambled for'ard. We went on again, keeping along towards the entrance, and occasionally bumping. On the top of one of these rocks was a great sea-bird. It flapped, screeching, into the darkness with a shrill cry of alarm, which I thought would wake the whole island.
How my heart did beat!
It was chilling work, and my teeth were chattering as I leant over the bows, shoving her off any rocks, and trying to find one with a lamp on it. There was a good deal of danger, too, for though the sea was calm, the swell was quite noticeable directly we got close in under the cliffs, and though the boat was a strongly built old tub, her sides once or twice creaked and groaned as they ground up against the rocks.
"Oars," whispered the Commander.
Jones stopped pulling, and I noticed that we did not seem to lose way; in fact, we glided quite rapidly past a great dark mass of boulders.
"We must be near the entrance now; look how we are being set in with the current," said the Commander softly.
"H'st!" he hissed, and we heard the regular noise of oar in rowlock. It was coming towards us, coming from seaward, every moment louder and clearer—ump-ump! ump-ump! backwards and forwards.
"It's a native boat," the Commander whispered; and then, "Back starboard, Jones! Back for your life, man!"
Jones jerked his oar violently in the water, and, oh horrors! the rotten wood cracked, gave way, and the blade fell into the sea as a dark shape went splashing past us, with a little glow amidships as from a red-hot charcoal brazier—enough to show the dim blotch of a man swaying to and fro, grunting loudly at each ump-ump of a long sweep over the stern.