Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/188

 two boats’ crews, numbering fourteen men. Our boats had left the ship with ten days’ provisions, and this  was the twenty-first day we had been absent. At noon the weather was a little more moderate, and we prepared to leave the bay.

When we got under way to beat out, standing close in shore, in going about we missed stays and the cutter was  thrown upon the reef. After several ineffectual efforts, we found it quite impossible to get the boat off. When Lieutenant Perry saw our condition he dropped anchor  a quarter of a mile away, in order to assist us if necessary. At the time of the accident not a native was in sight, but soon after they were seen flocking down to the beach in scores, armed with war-clubs and spears. All our arms and ammunition were soaked with salt water. We were trying to save something in the cutter when Lieutenant  Knox sang out, "They are coming! the ‘devils’ are  coming! Make for the launch, my men!" It was fortunate that all could swim, and that, too, on our backs,  for the splashing of the water with our hands and feet  frightened away those horrible shovel-nosed sharks that  are so numerous about the coral reefs.

Even in our perilous position we could not help feeling amused to see the "devils" trampling one another underfoot in their eagerness to secure whatever plunder there  was to be found in the cutter. In their greed they even allowed us to escape, only throwing a few spears, and  ulas, or short clubs, at us, which we managed to dodge. After stripping the cutter of everything, they dragged her over the reef, up into a grove of mangrove bushes.

As soon as all were safe in the launch we got under