It may be thought that there is little or nothing of interest to be
found in the operation of breaking up the wreck of a ship, but I, who
have assisted in such an operation, can testify most strongly to the
contrary; for when the work is undertaken as we undertook to break up
the wreck of the _Martha Brown_--that is to say, carefully, taking her
apart plank by plank and beam by beam, exactly reversing, in fact, the
several processes by which she was put together--there is plenty of both
interest and instruction to be found in observing the numberless
ingenious devices which have been resorted to by the shipwright to join
together the several members of the hull in such a manner as to ensure
the maximum of strength, so that, when once joined together, no strain
short of that involving the absolute destruction of the material should
be capable of pulling them apart again. We who had been aboard the
schooner during the time of her passage across the reef, and had
experienced in our own persons the terrific violence of the shocks to
which she had then been subjected, were amazed that she had not been
shattered like an _egg_ shell; but when, later on, we came to dismember
her, we were still more amazed to find how little damage, comparatively
speaking, she had sustained while passing through that fearful ordeal on
the reef, and what extraordinary exertions were needed to wrench her
several parts asunder. But a detailed description of the varied schemes
to which we were obliged to resort in order to effect our purpose would
be of no interest to the general reader; I will therefore content myself
with the bare statement that it cost us six weeks of the hardest labour
I ever performed in my life to reduce the _Martha Brown_ to her
component parts, and to stack the materials upon the beach in readiness
for use in the construction of the new schooner.
In fairness to ourselves, however, it must be said that during part of
that time there were only four of us engaged upon the work, Cunningham
being busy upon calculations of stability, the relative positions of the
centre of gravity and the metacentre of the new schooner, and I know not
what beside, in connection with the determination of the amount of
ballast that would be needed, the position of the masts, and the area
and proportions of the several sails--for now that the engineer was
fairly mounted upon his new hobby there was no possibility of dragging
him out of the saddle. He had several novel theories which he was
anxious to test, and he was resolutely determined that the new schooner
should be as nearly perfect as his skill could make her; he therefore
simply scoffed at us when we pointed out that time was flying,
indignantly demanded to be told what mattered a few days more or less in
comparison with the importance of the matters with which he was dealing,
and returned to his figures with renewed zest.
But all things come to an end sooner or later, and the day at length
arrived when Cunningham completed his final calculation, drew his last
line, and carefully rolled up his completed drawings, to await the
moment when they would be called for upon the beginning of the important
task of laying the keel of the new schooner.
Now, if I have succeeded in portraying anything like a true picture of
our life upon the island, the reader will have gathered the impression
that, after the first day following the wreck, we were constantly in a
condition of breathless activity, due to the fact that there were so
many matters, each of apparently paramount importance, all clamouring
for our instant attention, and that, at the beginning at least, we
strove to attend to all these several matters at the same time, doing
first a little to this, and then a little to that or the other,
according to what we believed at the moment to be most pressing. And
this state of affairs prevailed with us until we had salved everything
possible from the wreck, and until we had built our catamaran; after
which we felt that we might with advantage adopt some sort of system in
the arrangement of our work.
Now among a number of the things that we desired to do, but had
postponed in favour of other matters, which had seemed more pressingly
urgent, was the exploration of our cave. This cave was situated only
some thirty yards from the beach, in North Bay, in the heart of a
steeply rising acclivity which gradually merged itself in the plateau
constituting the western extremity of the island. It was only by the
merest accident that we had discovered the existence of the cavern on
that day when we undertook the exploration of the island--although there
is no doubt that we should have found it sooner or later--for the
entrance was so small that only one person could pass through at a time,
and even then only in a crouching position; and it was this latter
circumstance which at first so strongly commended the place to us as a
residence, for it was in fact quite a stronghold in its way, being
capable of defence for a practically unlimited period by a single armed
man. Once past that low and narrow opening, however, one found oneself
in quite a spacious chamber of roughly circular shape, some thirty feet
in diameter by about twelve feet high, with a perfectly smooth, dry,
sandy floor, rendering the cave a most comfortable place of abode, as we
discovered when we had taken up our quarters in it.
Thereafter we had all been so strenuously busy that, with the exception
of Cunningham, we had used the cave merely as a sleeping place; while
the engineer, absorbed in his drawings and calculations, had never
thought of exploring the cave and examining its extent, resting
satisfied with the knowledge that the place was amply large enough for
all our requirements, while the situation of the island rendered the
presence of wild animals or noxious reptiles within it an impossibility.
And so, absorbed in our various occupations, we had allowed the matter
to go on from day to day, recognising, in an abstract sort of fashion,
the fact that it would be no more than an act of common prudence to
examine the cavern, but daily postponing the examination until a more
convenient season. Thus the matter had been allowed to slide until the
day finally arrived when Cunningham reached the end of his labours--
rather earlier than he had anticipated--and, having put away his papers,
suddenly bethought him that here at last was his opportunity to give the
interior of the cavern a thorough overhaul. He accordingly provided
himself with an abundant supply of dry branches, to serve as torches,
lighted one of them, and proceeded forthwith to investigate, with the
result that about an hour later he startled us all by unexpectedly
emerging from behind a thick clump of bushes on the beach of South-west
Bay and frantically waving a lighted torch in his hand, under the
influence of such violent excitement that when we dropped work, and ran
to him to learn what was the matter, we found him to all intents and
purposes incoherent for the moment.
"Hurrah, you chaps, hurrah!" he yelled, waving the flaming torch above
his head as he advanced to meet us. "Aren't we a lot of lucky dogs, eh?
Cheer, you beggars, cheer, and split your throats! Who wouldn't be
shipwrecked, if they could meet with such a slice of luck as ours? By
George!--I say, Temple, kick me, old chap, will ye, just to convince me
that I'm awake."
"Steady, man, steady!" I returned, seizing him by the shoulder and
giving him a good shaking. "What in the world is the matter with you,
and what is all the excitement about? You don't mean to say that
there's a ship in sight, standing in for the island, do you?"
"Ship!" he retorted, in accents of ineffable contempt; "not much, there
isn't. No, it is something infinitely better than that. It is this, my
son, that when we leave this island we do so as a little bunch of
bloated plutocrats--millionaires, my boy, millionaires!"
"Millionaires!" I ejaculated. "What on earth does the man mean? What
are you driving at, Cunningham? Can't you pull yourself together and
tell us in plain English what has happened?"
"I know," exclaimed Parsons, with sudden illumination. "He've found a
buried treasure! Ain't that it, Mr Cunnin'ham?"
"Ay," answered Cunningham, "you are right, in a way, Chips, certainly.
But it is no pirates' hoard that I have found--no chests heaped high
with cups and candlesticks of gold and silver and jewelled weapons, and
overflowing with necklaces, bracelets, and rings torn from the persons
of shrieking women; it is something far better than that. It is a gold
mine, in the heart of yonder hill."
"A gold mine!" I returned, in accents of deep disappointment. "Surely
that is nothing to get into such a tremendous state of excitement about.
We have no tools with which to work it, and--"
"Tools!" repeated Cunningham with withering scorn; "we have all the
tools we shall need. See this," and he produced from his pocket a
nodule of a dull, reddish-yellow colour, of irregular shape, and about
the size of a small egg. "I picked this out of the soil with my
fingers. And there is plenty more where this came from."
I took the nugget in my hand and examined it curiously. There was
nothing very remarkable about it excepting its weight, which was very
great for an object of its size. But it was gold, without a doubt; I
had seen and examined gold nuggets before, and could not be deceived.
"Where did you find this?" I asked, as I passed the thing on to Murdock
for his inspection.
"In our cave--or rather in a passage leading from it to this beach,"
answered Cunningham, who had by this time regained his composure. "You
see," he continued, "the way of it was this. I have finished my
calculations and drawings--finished them rather earlier to-day than I
expected; and I thought that, as I had an hour or two to spare, I might
as well employ the time in giving the cavern a thorough overhaul.
Accordingly I provided myself with some dry branches to serve as
torches, lighted up, and proceeded to look round. Then I found that, as
I have more than once suspected, there was an opening at the back end of
the cavern, giving access to another chamber almost as large as the one
which we occupy; while beyond that again there are other passages and
chambers--seven of the latter in all--communicating with each other, and
ending in a long, tortuous cleft forming a passage which leads out
there, behind those bushes. But it is the last chamber of all, the one
nearest in this direction, that is the marvel. Unlike the others--all
rock chambers--the one about which I am now speaking is a great hollow
in what appears to be a `fault' of stiff clay; and, man alive, that clay
is as thick with gold nuggets as a pudding is thick with plums! There
must be more than a hundredweight of nuggets actually in sight,
protruding from the walls and floor of that chamber, every one of which
may be picked out with no other tools than a man's fingers; so what
there is hidden, and just waiting to be dug out, heaven only knows, but
there must be tons upon tons of it! Come and see for yourselves. Never
mind about your work for the rest of the day, come and look at your
fortunes; it is not every day that you will see such a sight, I give you
my word."
Well, of course, you will guess that we did not need a second
invitation. There were we, five men cast away upon an uncharted island
in mid-Pacific, far from all the usual ship tracks; our hopes of rescue
consisting in the possibility that we might be taken off, sooner or
later, by a stray whaler, or, failing that, of effecting our escape
eventually in a craft to be built by ourselves--provided that we should
prove possessed of the requisite skill to build her out of the materials
at our disposal. At that moment, and under those circumstances, gold
was just about as valueless to us as the pebbles on the beach; yet such
is the magic of the word that no sooner was gold mentioned than we all
incontinently dropped our tools, and, quite forgetting that it might be
our fate never to escape at all from the island, eagerly followed
Cunningham, consumed with impatience to view this wonderful find of his.
And wonderful, in truth, it was. The way to it was through what
Cunningham had aptly described as a cleft, the outer extremity of which
was in the face of the cliff, so completely concealed from the beach by
a clump of bushes that it might never have been discovered, except by
the merest accident. The cleft was exceedingly tortuous as to
direction, narrow, so low that in places it was necessary to go down
upon hands and knees to effect a passage, full of awkward and unexpected
projections, rough and uneven of floor, with here and there little pools
of water which had dripped from the roof and sides. We traversed about
a mile of this, and then suddenly emerged into a great, shapeless hollow
in what appeared to be a wide stratum of stiff brown clay, sandwiched
between two almost vertical layers of sandstone, which seemed to have
been turned over during some tremendous natural convulsion, perhaps when
the island was hove up above the surface of the sea. And what
Cunningham had said respecting the abundance of gold was strictly and
literally true: the nuggets were as thickly arranged, proportionately,
as raisins in a Christmas pudding; there were hundreds of them in sight,
singly, at distances apart of not much more than a foot, and in little
groups of half a dozen or more, almost touching each other. Within two
minutes I dug out, with my fingers only, a nugget shaped somewhat like a
potato and as big as an orange, and the dislodging of that revealed
another sticking in the clay behind it. Naturally we all with one
accord went to work picking out nuggets, some using our bare fingers
only, while those who happened to have knives about them used them. In
the course of half an hour we had each picked out as many nuggets as we
could dispose about our persons, and then the lessening number of
torches warned us that it was high time to beat a retreat; but our
labours seemed to have produced no visible effect, for where we had
removed one nugget we had, as a rule, disclosed another. I estimated
that, during that short half-hour, each of us had collected an average
of about seven pounds weight of gold.
Now, for a day or two after this discovery, it threatened to be a most
serious misfortune; for the ability to acquire large quantities of gold
at the mere cost of the exertion necessary to pick it out of the soil
appealed so strongly to the boatswain, carpenter, and sailmaker that
during the two days immediately following Cunningham's sensational
announcement they absolutely refused to do any work whatever except dig
out nuggets of gold, and the more they gathered the more eager did they
appear to be to gather more. But at the end of that time, the fact that
Cunningham and I had steadfastly refrained from the display of any
anxiety to share in their good fortune, having, on the contrary, pursued
the task of breaking up the wreck, together with our reiterated
insistance on the greater importance of the work upon which we were
engaged, steadied them a bit; and by the end of the second day we
detected signs that the sharp edge of their enthusiasm had worn off, and
that they were once more beginning to think. Then Cunningham and I
proceeded to remind them of a fact to which, at the outset, they
stubbornly refused to listen, namely, that we knew where the gold was,
and could get it at any time; but the matter which most vitally
concerned us was to get the schooner built and in the water as quickly
as possible, so that, should it become necessary for us to quit the
island in haste, we might have the means to do so. The three
recalcitrants came to see this at last, persuaded thereto, perhaps, by a
rather exaggerated attitude of indifference to the gold on the part of
Cunningham and myself, and an equally exaggerated anxiety to push on
with the schooner; with the ultimate result that on the morning of the
third day they rather shamefacedly announced their readiness to turn-to
again, and accompanied us to South-west Bay. But what put the finishing
touch to the matter was Cunningham's audacious proposal to ballast the
schooner entirely with gold, and sail in her direct home to England.
This idea very strongly appealed to their somewhat crude imaginations,
especially when the engineer took a sheet of paper and proved to them by
figures that if we could obtain gold enough to carry out this plan, the
value of it, equally divided among the five of us, would enable each to
bank upward of half a million; which, if judiciously invested, would
provide us with an income of somewhere about two thousand pounds
sterling per month! Such figures as these naturally appealed to men
whose incomes hitherto had amounted to about five pounds per month, and
they were immediately all on fire to build the Schooner, if only to see
how much gold she could be induced to carry as ballast.
Had there been a shipwright in our party he would probably have been
intensely amused at the lightheartedness and assured confidence with
which we approached the task of building a schooner, small, certainly,
but complete in every respect, out of the timbers and planking of the
dismembered _Martha Brown_. I do not believe that anyone excepting
myself had the slightest suspicion of the difficulties that we were so
cheerfully facing; but by the time that we had got the keel blocks laid,
and were preparing to shape and put together the keel, it began to dawn
upon us that we had undertaken a distinctly formidable task, and one in
which we might very easily fail should we once permit ourselves to
become discouraged. Indeed, the getting out of the keel was in itself a
work of such difficulty that Chips more than once threw down his tools
and pronounced the task impossible, demanding the revision and
simplification of the design.
But Cunningham was deeply in love with the design which he had worked
out with so much care--and so indeed was I; therefore we resolutely
resisted Parsons' demands, and insisted that all that was needed was
patience and the resolution to take the necessary pains, and in the end
we got our own way and the work proceeded. But it proceeded with what,
to me, was painful slowness, there being days occasionally on which the
embryo ship presented precisely the same appearance when we knocked off
work in the evening that she had done when we started in the morning,
the whole day having been consumed in cutting out and putting together
the several pieces of timber which were subsequently to be worked into
her hull. Nevertheless, patience and perseverance worked wonders, and
by and by, after we had been steadily at work for close upon six months,
a day came when we were able to stand and gaze admiringly at the
completed skeleton of as smart a little vessel as I ever set eyes upon.
If she possessed a fault in my eyes it was that she presented altogether
too smart an appearance, being, in model, nothing less than an
exceedingly beautiful little yacht; and according to my merchant
seaman's view of the matter a forty-foot yacht was not precisely the
kind of craft best adapted to navigate the thousands of miles of ocean
that lay between ourselves and home. Yet when Cunningham challenged me
to point out what I regarded as faults, I was met at every turn by
arguments which seemed quite unanswerable, so that at last I was driven
to take refuge in the adage that the proof of the pudding is in the
eating, and to acknowledge that if the vessel only behaved half as well
as her designer asserted she would, I should be more than satisfied.
Now, although there were five of us--all young and in the very pink of
condition--engaged upon the work of building the schooner, there were
times when the united strength of all hands scarcely sufficed to
accomplish some particular task, such as the setting up of a pair of
frames, or the bending and fastening of a stringer; consequently we
welcomed, almost literally with open arms, the arrival of two
able-bodied assistants, who came to us under somewhat singular
circumstances.
From the day of the wreck, when we found ourselves castaways, up to the
moment when, as I have said above, we were able to gaze upon the
complete skeleton of our new schooner, we had enjoyed an uninterrupted
continuance of perfect weather; but a few days after the date referred
to the Trade wind died away, and all the indications pointed toward the
approach of another hurricane. And indeed we were allowed barely
sufficient time to make everything about the shipyard secure when our
anticipations were realised by the outburst of a hurricane which, if it
was not as violent as the one that had shipwrecked us, was more than
sufficiently so to compel us completely to suspend our building
operations for two whole days. These we spent in the cavern diligently
and systematically digging for gold, under the direction and supervision
of Cunningham; and I may as well mention here that the results of the
two days' labours demonstrated that we had been lucky enough to stumble
upon what is probably the most fabulously rich "pocket" of gold nuggets
that has ever been discovered by man.
The gale broke some time during the night of the second day, and when we
awoke and turned out on the following morning the weather had reverted
to its normal delightful conditions, and only a heavy south-westerly sea
remained as evidence of what had been. I think I have already mentioned
that it was our habit to proceed to and fro between North and South-west
Bays in the catamaran, in preference to tramping two miles overland in
the tropical heat; but on this particular day we walked, being of
opinion that it was hardly desirable to expose the catamaran to the
strain of a trip round the end of the island in so steep and heavy a
sea. Knocking-off work at the usual time, we climbed the cliffs and
proceeded to walk back to North Bay across the plateau, the boatswain,
carpenter, and sailmaker leading the way, while Cunningham and I
followed, about a hundred yards behind, a distance which was more than
sufficient to allow the trio to get out of sight ahead of us. And as
Cunningham and I sauntered along very slowly we had no expectation of
seeing anything more of Murdock and his companions until our arrival at
the cave; consequently we were a little surprised, upon our emerging
from the jungle, to find the three seamen standing in the open, upon the
highest point of the plateau, all gazing intently to seaward.
"What is it, Murdock?" I shouted, as we hastened our steps to join
them. "Anything in sight?"
"Why, yes, Mr Temple," answered the boatswain, facing round toward us.
"There's something floatin', about a couple o' mile off there, that
looks like a boat with people in her."
"A boat!" I ejaculated. "Where away? Show me!"
"Come here, sir, and stand where I am," replied Murdock. Then, as I
took up a position on the spot indicated, the man placed himself behind
me, and proceeded to point over my shoulder.
"See that there low bush, yonder, Mr Temple, just in line with my
finger?" he demanded. "Very well, then. Just run your eye along about
a p'int, or maybe a little more, to the west'ard, and--there! d'ye see
her, sir? Ah, now she's vanished again in the trough. But you keep
your eye gazin' in that direction and you'll--there she is again! See
her, sir?"
"Ay, I do," said I, as I caught a momentary glimpse of a small dark
object which appeared for a moment, hovering on the crest of a sea, and
then sank out of sight again. And, as Murdock had said, it certainly
presented very much the appearance of a small boat drifting slowly away
toward the south-west before the freshening Trade wind. Moreover,
although the glimpse I had caught had been but momentary, I thought I
had detected the appearance of what might very well be a crouching human
figure sitting in her. Presently I got another sight of the thing, and
my impression that it was indeed a boat--or possibly a canoe--with one
or more persons in her was so greatly strengthened that I determined
there and then to investigate.
"I really believe you are right, Murdock," said I. "At all events it
looks so much like a boat--with people in her--that we certainly ought
to satisfy ourselves. So, come along, one of you; we'll take the
catamaran and go off to her. If it really is a boat, and there are
people in her, it is very evident that they are too utterly exhausted to
make the island, and if they miss it they will inevitably perish. Come
along; we have not a moment to waste if we are to save the daylight."
With one accord each of my companions stepped forward, eager to
accompany me the moment that there was a question of saving life; but I
needed only one man, and I chose Murdock, as being the smartest seaman
and the strongest man among them: and without further ado we took to our
heels and raced to the beach, I shouting over my shoulder to Cunningham
to stay where he was and guide us by signalling with his hands the
direction in which we should steer.
As I had said, we had not a moment to waste, for the sun's disk was even
then within a finger's breadth of the horizon, and darkness followed
sunset with amazing swiftness in that latitude. Murdock and I therefore
ran at our utmost speed to the beach, cast adrift the catamaran, sprang
aboard her, thrust her head offshore, and then threw ourselves upon the
halyards and mast-headed the yard, when I seized the steering paddle and
headed the craft for an opening between the breakers on the reef, while
Murdock stationed himself beside me, with his hand shielding his eyes as
he stared seaward, anxiously watching for the first glimpse of the
object of which we were in pursuit.
For the moment, however, his efforts were useless, as he and I both
knew, for the object had been so far to the westward when last seen that
we could not hope to sight her until we were fairly beyond the limits of
the bay; and when this at length happened the upper edge of the sun's
disk was just visible above the western horizon, sinking beneath it at
the precise moment when the catamaran shot through the opening between
two formidable walls of breakers, which were dashing themselves into
spray thirty feet high as they hurled themselves upon the lava reef.
The boat, or whatever it was, ought now to be within the range of our
vision, and Murdock intently scrutinised the darkening sea ahead for
some sign of it, but in vain. Then he turned his glances shoreward and
saw Cunningham standing on the verge of the bluff, vigorously waving us
to keep away.
"Put up your hellum a bit, sir," he admonished me, with his eye still
upon Cunningham; then--"Steady!" as he saw the engineer fling both hands
above his head, and almost at the same instant I caught the faintest
glimpse imaginable of a small dark spot appearing for a moment in
ghostly fashion against the creaming head of a distant breaker, just
clear of the lower end of our lateen yard.
"There she is!" I exclaimed, and as I spoke a star glimmered out of the
deepening blue almost immediately above the spot where the object had
appeared.
"Where away, sir?" demanded the boatswain, again peering ahead under the
sharp of his hand.
"Do you see that star?" I responded, pointing with my disengaged hand.
"Well, she is about half a point to the westward--there she is again,
straight ahead!"
"I see her, sir; I see her," answered Murdock. "Steady as you go, Mr
Temple, and we're bound to pick her up."
I thought so too, although the darkness was falling about us with the
rapidity of a sea fog gathering. Still, the star was a splendid guide,
and steering by it we caught two or three additional glimpses of the
object before the darkness completely enveloped us. Moreover, the
catamaran was slashing along at racing speed, smothering us with spray
every time she hit the crest of a wave; and now my chief fear was that
this same spray might so effectually conceal our surroundings at the
precise moment when we most needed to see, namely, when we were
surmounting a comber, that we might unwittingly overshoot our mark.
Therefore at very brief intervals I admonished Murdock to "keep his eyes
skinned", at the same time myself keeping as sharp a lookout as I could.
I estimated that, with the breeze then blowing, we ought to cover the
distance between the object and ourselves in about six or seven minutes
after clearing the reef, but I had no means of judging the time, except
by guesswork, out there in the darkness, and I was on tenterhooks lest
we should miss the thing and stand too far out, when the chances would
be all against our picking her up on the return journey. Therefore at
last, feeling that we must be pretty close to the object of our quest, I
sent Murdock forward, believing that he would have a better chance of
picking her up from there than by standing alongside me, although his
figure would greatly obscure my own view.
Accordingly the boatswain went right forward into the very eyes of the
catamaran, where he would be clear of the heaviest of the flying spray;
and he had scarcely taken his station when, without looking round, he
suddenly shouted:
"There she is, sir! Keep her away or you'll be on to her; hard up, sir!
So, steady! Now, hard down and shake her. That'll do, sir; keep her
at that. Luff a bit yet, sir. So, steady!" and, dashing aft, the
boatswain snatched up a small coil of line that we had made ready for
the purpose, and hurled himself recklessly at a dark mass that at that
moment came sliding close past what had been our lee side before I
luffed the catamaran into the wind. I heard the splashing clatter of
his boots as he landed upon certain objects that sounded like loose
paddles lying washing about in the bottom of the canoe--for such I now
saw the craft to be; saw him stoop, as though making fast the rope he
had taken with him; and then he shouted: "All fast, sir; let her go
off!" I put up the helm of the catamaran, and as she fell off and began
to gather fresh way Murdock hauled his prize up alongside and scrambled
out of her, snubbing the towline to a length of about two fathoms.
"It's a canoe, sir," he reported as he rose to his feet beside me, "and
there's people aboard her--natives--four or five, I sh'd say, though I
didn't stop to count 'em; and I'm blest if I know whether they're alive
or dead, but I think there must be life in one of 'em at least, for when
I jumped into her I stumbled over one, and I thought I heard a groan."
"Well," said I, "I hope we have been in time to save the poor beggars.
I suspect that they belong to the island that is visible from the
crater, about a hundred miles to the south-west of us, and that they
were caught in the gale and blown out to sea. If so, they have been at
sea three whole nights and two days, drenched all the time with the
flying spray, buffeted with the wind, and labouring hard all the while
to keep their cockleshell of a craft afloat. And these islanders are
not very tough when it comes to facing prolonged exposure of that kind."
We got the catamaran round and headed her for the island, with the canoe
in tow, the carpenter having been thoughtful enough to light a fire on
the beach to serve as a guide to us; and a quarter of an hour later we
were ashore again, with Cunningham, Chips, and Sails tenderly lifting
five natives out of the half-swamped canoe and laying them on the sand,
close to the fire, while Murdock and I secured the catamaran. By the
time that we had done this, Cunningham had got to work upon the new
arrivals, in two of whom he found signs of life, while the other three
he pronounced doubtful. Then, under his directions, we each took a
body, which we proceeded vigorously to chafe and slap with our bare
hands, varying the treatment with occasional attempts to administer a
little stimulant, with the object of restoring the suspended circulation
of the blood; and eventually--not to dwell at unnecessary length upon
this episode--we succeeded in restoring two of them, but the remaining
three defied our utmost efforts, although we worked at them until late
into the night. Then, having bountifully fed the two survivors, we left
them to dispose of themselves as they would for the night, and retired
to our cavern.