A very brief trial of the lagoon, at various depths, soon convinced us
that it contained no pearl-shell, both George and the Rotumah man coming
up empty-handed after each dive, and pronouncing the bottom to be _ogé_,
_i.e._, poverty-stricken as regarded shell. But we made one rather
pleasing discovery, which was that the lagoon contained a vast number
of green turtle. We could see the creatures, some of them being of great
size, swimming about beneath the boat in all directions. It at once
occurred to me that I should let Guest know, for we were getting short
of provisions on board the _Fray Bentos_, and had been using native
food--pork, yams, and taro, to eke out our scanty store. Here, now, was
an opportunity of getting a supply of fresh meat which would last us for
a couple of months or more; as we could easily stow eighty or a hundred
turtle on board, and kill one or two every day as required. We always
carried with us a heavy turtle-net, made of coir fibre, which I had
bought two years before in the Tokelau Group. But, first of all, I
consulted with our native crew as to whether we could dispense with the
net by remaining on the island all night and watching for the turtle to
come ashore.
They all assured me that we should get none, or at best but few, as it
was not the laying season.
“Very well,” I said, “go off to the ship, and tell the captain that
there is no pearl-shell here, but plenty of turtle. Ask him if he will
let you have the turtle-net, so that we can set it across the mouth of
the passage as soon as it becomes dark; and tell him we shall come
off again by midnight if he does not care about our staying till the
morning; but that as we are pretty sure to get a lot of turtle, he had
better send the longboat as well.”
Yorke, at first, intended to go off again to the _Francesca_, but I told
him I was so sure that Guest would come to an anchor when he heard about
the turtle, that he (Guest) would be sure to tell Napoleon and the other
men on board the cutter to do the same. “In fact,” I added, “a supply
of turtle will be a God-send to us, and the skipper will not mind, I am
sure, if we stay here for a couple of days, under the circumstances.”
We pulled ashore to a little sandy beach, and Yorke and myself, taking
our rifles, ammunition, and a few biscuits each, got out, the native
crew at once starting off again for the ship, pulling as hard as they
could, for they were eager to return with the turtle-net and enjoy
themselves as only South Sea Islanders and other of Nature's children do
when fishing.
About an hour after the boat had gone, we set to work to get some
coconuts to drink, both for ourselves and the boat's crew when
they returned. Yorke ascended a very tall palm--about sixty feet in
height--like a native, and began throwing down the young nuts. I took
a shorter tree near by, and was leisurely twisting off the heavy nuts,
when he, who had a good view of the sea, called out to me that it had
fallen calm.
“And what I don't like, Drake, is this,” he added--“there's a dull,
greasy look on the water over to the eastward there, and I'd like to
be on board the Francesca instead of being here. I don't like it, I can
tell you, and I'm sorry we did not go off in the boat.”
I, in my fatuous, youthful conceit, laughed at his forebodings.
“It's only a New Britain squall--a lot of wind for ten minutes, then a
power of rain for another twenty, and then it'll be over.”
Yorke, however, was too old and experienced a seaman to disregard
the signs of coming danger. He quickly descended from his tree, and I
followed suit.
“There's something more than a squall coming, my lad. Let us cut through
the bush across to the weather side of the island, and try and stop the
boat. We can do it if we are quick.”
The island was less than a mile in width, even at its broadest portion,
which was where we had landed; so, after a hurried drink, we picked
up our rifles and started off to try to intercept the boat as she was
pulling down the outer and eastern shore. But before we had made two
hundred yards, we came to a dead stop, our progress being barred by a
dense thicket of thorny and stunted undergrowth. We turned aside and
skirted the thicket for a quarter of a mile, then tried again, with the
same result--it was absolutely impossible to force our way through the
obstacle.
By this time the air had become stiflingly hot and oppressive, and the
rapidly darkening sky presaged the coming storm. From every pore in our
bodies the perspiration was streaming profusely, and our hands and faces
were scratched and bleeding.
“We must go back,” said Yorke, “we cannot possibly get to the other side
of the island through this damnable scrub. The only thing we can do is
to run along the inner beach of the island till we come to its end, wade
across the reef, and try to stop the boat before she has gone too far.
This is no common squall, I'm afraid--it's going to be a hurricane. Come
on.”
We started off at a run, along the hard sand, but before we had done the
first quarter of a mile, I felt that I could go no further, for I
was pumped out, could scarcely breathe, and felt a strange, unnatural
faintness overcoming me--a not uncommon sensation experienced by many
people just before a hurricane or an earthquake.
“You must go on alone,” I said, pantingly, to Yorke; “leave me here.
I'll be all right, even if I have to stop here a month of Sundays. I
can't starve in such a place as this.”
Pitching his own and my rifle up on the bank above high water mark, he
seized me and lifted me up on his back, telling me to hold on, as he
meant to make a big try for the boat. It was no use my protesting--he
set off again at a steady run, my weight apparently impeding his
progress no more than if he had been carrying a doll instead of ten
stone.
At last we gained the end of the island, where there was a break in the
verdure, and from which we had a brief view of the sea before it was
blotted out by the black wall of the coming hurricane.
“We're done as far as getting on board is concerned,” he said, as I
slid down his back on to the sand; “but, thank God, the boat is safe. In
another ten minutes she would have been too late to have reached either
the cutter or brigantine, and have been smothered. Look, Captain Guest
is all ready, and so is the cutter!”
I got up on my feet, just in time to see the boat go alongside the
brigantine, which was under a close reefed lower topsail and a bit of
her mainsail only--for Guest knew what was coming, and had prepared to
meet it; the cutter, too, was reefed down, and had taken her dingy on
deck. At that moment, however, both vessels were becalmed; but scarcely
had the whale boat been hoisted up to the starboard davits of the _Fray
Bentos_ and secured, when the hurricane struck both vessels. I thought
at first that our poor old brigantine was going to turn turtle, for she
was all but thrown on her beam ends; but righting herself gallantly, she
plunged away into the growing darkness, followed by the cutter, and in
five minutes both were hidden from view, and Yorke and myself had to
throw ourselves flat on our faces to avoid being blown down the beach
into the lagoon.
I had once, years before when a boy in Fiji, seen a bad hurricane, and
was rather proud of my experience, but I never saw, and never wish to
see again, such a truly terrifying and appalling sight as my companion
and I now witnessed--for within an hour all Nature seemed to have gone
stark, raving mad, and I never expected to see the next morning's sun. I
do not think it was the fearful force of the wind which so terrified me
into a state of helplessness as the diabolical clamour--the clashing
and tearing and rending asunder of the trees, accompanied by a prolonged
howling mingled with a deep droning hum like one sometimes hears when a
volcano is in eruption--and, in a minor key, the dulled roaring of the
surf as the mighty seas swept over the outer reef, and broke over the
weather shore with such tremendous force that the island seemed to
tremble to its very foundations.
Unable to make himself heard in the pandemonium roaring around us, Yorke
turned to me, and gripping me by one hand, and shielding his eyes with
the other from the hurtling showers of sand and pebbles which threatened
to cut our faces to pieces, he managed to drag me along the beach to a
low ledge of coral rocks, under the shelter of which we were protected
from the fury of the wind, and, in a measure, safe from flying branches,
though all along the beach coco-palms were being torn up by the roots,
or their lofty crowns cut off as if they were no stronger than a dahlia
or some such weakly plant.
As we crouched on the sand under the ledge of rock, a terrific but
welcome downpour of rain fell, and we were able to satisfy our thirst
by pressing our mouths to crevices in the rock overhead. But we were
not long allowed to remain undisturbed in our shelter, for, although the
tide was on the ebb, the enormous influx of water, driven over the
reef by the violence of the wind, so swelled the lagoon that we had to
abandon our refuge and crawl on our hands and knees up over the bank,
and thence into the thorny scrub, where we were at least safe from
falling trees, there being none near us.
“I must try and get our rifles before it is too late,” shouted Yorke
in my ear. “I know the place, but if I don't get there pretty quick,
I shall never be able to recognise it. Stay where you are until I get
back, then we'll try and find a better camping place before night comes
on--if this little tin-pot island isn't blown out of the water over on
to New Guinea in the meantime.”
By this time I was beginning to get some courage, and to feel ashamed of
myself; so, as soon as Yorke had crept out of the scrub, I braced
myself up, and taking out my sheath knife, began to cut away the thorny
branches, and pull up by the roots some of the scrub around me, so as
to make more room. The soil consisted of decomposed shell and vegetable
matter, very soft and porous, underneath which were loose coral slabs,
and I soon had a space cleared large enough for us both to lie down
upon. Then I started to enclose it on three sides by a low wall of the
flat coral stones, across which I laid a thick and nearly rain-proof
covering of branches and leaves, and when Yorke returned an hour later,
I was almost finished, and had begun to make a fire of dead roots and
branches.
“That's grand,” he said, as he laid down the rifles. “I was wondering
if your matches were dry. Mine are spoilt, as I had them loose in my
pocket. How is your tobacco?”
“Quite dry, too. Here you are, fill your pipe.”
The man's thoughtfulness showed at once. “No, thank you--not just yet.
I'll improve this newly-erected mansion of ours by getting coconut
branches up from the beach. We might as well make our roof as watertight
as we can before dark. Then I want something to eat, and there are
plenty of coconuts lying about everywhere.”
“We won't starve,” I said; “there are any amount of robber crabs in
this scrub, and to-night we can get as many as we want, if we can make a
bright fire.”
By dark we had succeeded in carrying up thirty or forty coconut
branches, and covering our sleeping place over in a more satisfactory
manner, though we were every now and then chilled to the bone by the
stinging rain. Our rifles, matches, tobacco, and a few biscuits, we
placed in a dry spot, and then built up a small but hot fire of roots
under the shelter, and, after eating a meal of coconut and biscuit, we
filled our pipes, piled on more roots, and sat by the fire drying
our clothes, and listening to the wild uproar of wind and sea,
congratulating ourselves upon being in a spot where we were at least
safe from the wind, for our camp was at least eight or ten feet below
the general level of the island, both on its windward and leeward sides.
All that night the wind blew with terrific violence, and the noise of
the surf thrashing upon the coral barriers of the island was something
indescribable. At about midnight, just after a lull succeeded by a
heavy fall of rain, the wind hauled round two or three points to the
southward, and, if possible, blew with still greater violence. The
crashing of trees mingling with the demoniacal shriek of the hurricane,
was enough to disturb the mind of the bravest; but my companion lay
quietly beside the fire, smoking his pipe and talking to me as he would
had we been seated at the supper table on board the _Fray Bentos_.
Yet that he was deeply anxious about our ship-mates I well knew, when,
bidding me good-night, he laid his great frame upon the sand and went to
sleep.