I walked up and down as I was told, though I must confess that I felt a most undeniable longing to sit down; but as, when I once leaned up against a palm tree, I found that I began to nod and dropped my musket, I refrained, and walked up and down steadily until the Southern Cross told me it was time to rouse Bill out.
He protested that he had only just lain down, and would not believe that the time for his watch had come; and it was not until I threatened to douse him with cold water that he would turn out and relieve me. I gave him the same orders as Tom had given me, and warned him to be specially careful when he made up the fire, so that no smoke should escape out of our cave, lest it might be seen by the natives.
I lay down again as soon as he was on watch, and was asleep in a moment. From my sleep I was awaked by Tom shouting out, “What’s up? There’s a musket-shot!” and we both rushed out of the cave, and found that Bill was nowhere to be seen.
Tom and I at once seized our muskets, saw that the boat was ready to shove off at a moment’s notice, and called out to Bill to know where he was.
Almost directly afterwards we saw a man running towards us, who fell down at our feet and caught hold of our knees; and then, before we could make out what it meant, we heard another shot, and saw Bill burst from some trees near, his musket in his hands still smoking, and crying, “Jump into the boat and shove off; there are a whole heap of people after me.”
We all jumped into the boat, followed by the stranger, who had nothing on him but a necklace of sharks’ teeth and shells, who said, “Plenty bad mans want kiki[[1]] me.”
We seized our paddles, and began to pull out of the creek, and were only just in time; for some twenty men, armed with spears and arrows, came rushing on the beach and let fly at us.
Our new companion seized a musket and fired at them in return, knocking over a great big fellow who seemed to be the leader. This stopped them for a moment, but evidently they did not mean to let us off easily, for half a dozen or more plunged into the water and began to swim after us.
We paddled away for dear life, but the swimmers swam so fast that we saw they would soon catch us up unless something stopped them. “Pull, lads, pull for your lives!” cried Tom.
“Ay,” said Bill, “pull all you know. They’re murdering cannibals, and had killed one man, and were going to kill this fellow, when I shot one who was going to knock him over the head with a big club.”