“Give way, lads,” said Tom. “It’s no use wasting our breath talking. The nearer we get to this fellow’s island, the better chance we have. It’s a bad business, Sam, that you let that musket fall overboard. We have none now for Calla, who could use one well.”
Tom, when he had said this, paddled away some time in silence, Bill pulling the oar, and I steering; but the sound of the drums of our pursuers came nearer, and at last Tom said, “I can stand this no longer,” and laying in his paddle looked to the loading of our muskets, and cutting up some bullets into quarters he put them in on the top of the ordinary charge, and saw that the flints were properly fixed and touch-holes clear.
When he had done this he stood up and said, “I can see the canoes now. There are five, as Calla said—great big double ones; and besides the men paddling, there are a lot of chaps up on a great platform amidships.”
“How long before they’ll be up with us?” I asked. “Can we fetch Aneitou before they catch us?”
Tom looked round and said, “I scarcely dare say that. There’s a point as runs out, where maybe we might do it; but there’s such a surf a-tumbling on it as would smash up us and the Escape, and all belonging to us.”
“Have a good look, mate, and see if there mayn’t be a break in the surf,” I said.
Calla, who had been listening to what we were saying, now got up and stood alongside Tom, and pointed out what to him had been undistinguishable—half a dozen black spots falling and rising on the surface of the sea near the point.
“There, them be Aneitou canoe. White man he come along of them.”
“How can you tell?” said Tom.
“Me sabey him canoe.” And then looking to windward at our pursuers, Calla said, “Now plenty soon big corroboree. Aneitou men and Paraka men” (Paraka was the name of the volcanic island) “come all one time to we.”