Twenty Years Before the Mast by Charles Erskine

Author:Charles Erskine [Erskine, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Ebooks
Published: 2016-11-03T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI.

WHILE here, besides the vessels, seventeen boats had been actively engaged in surveying the different islands, reefs, and bays. We were sometimes absent from the ship fifteen or eighteen days at a time, without ever being out of the boats, and were continually in danger from the treachery of the natives, who were ever watching for an opportunity to entrap us.

The ship’s launch, Lieutenant Oliver H. Perry, grandson of Commodore Perry of Lake Erie fame, and the first cutter, Lieutenant Samuel R. Knox, grandson of General Knox, one of the old Revolutionary heroes, while surveying one of the Windward Islands experienced a very heavy gale from the south. We sought shelter in Sualib Bay. Here we lay five days waiting for the gale to abate. During this time we saw but few natives. Our store of provisions was exhausted, and we subsisted upon the few fish we could catch, and those we were obliged to eat raw. Occasionally we would secure a few cocoanuts which were drifting by the boats. The third night the rain came down in torrents, and we filled our ten-gallon breaker. This precious supply we used sparingly. On the fourth day a native swam out to the cutter with five bananas, which were equally divided between the 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.

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