Yorke The Adventurer by George Lewis Becke (most important books to read .TXT) 📖

good care not to mention the matter again.

An hour after leaving the brigantine, we found a passage--narrow but safe--leading into the lagoon, which was a mile or mile and a half in width, and but for the one opening in the reef, completely land locked by four small islands, all low and densely wooded with banyan and other trees, and connected with each other at low tide. Here and there, at intervals, were groves of coco-palms, and a few _vi_ trees--the wild mango of the Western Pacific, growing close down to the beach, which on the inner side of the lagoon was of bright yellow sand, and presented a very pleasing appearance.


Chapter IV


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 _oge_, _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