The sea and sky were really beginning to look nasty, and I did not want to think of it. But the pirate went discoursing pleasantly of deaths and wrecks, while the men were putting various things into the whaleboat, and getting ready to lower away. He did not often have a passenger, but when he did, he evidently thought it his duty to keep her entertained.
We were very near to the reef now--so close that I was able to take a photograph of it, a little marred by the rainy weather. Meantime, the boat was being swung out, and the men were getting in. And now “a strange thing happened.” Out of nowhere at all eight sharks appeared--large ones, too--and began to cruise hungrily about the _Duchess’s_ hull, their lithe yellowish bodies sharply outlined in the dark blue water, their evil eyes fixed on me, as I overhung the rail to look at them. “If only!” they said as plainly as possible, with those hideously intelligent green orbs. “If only------”
“What has brought those horrible brutes about us?” I asked.
“Those? oh, they’re waiting to be fed, I suppose. Pretty much all the ships that came this way before us have given them a good dinner. I bet they say grace before meat now every time they see a sail, which isn’t often. Here, you Oki, put in that keg of beef.”
“Where are you going?” I demanded with considerable interest, for the pirate captain never did things like any one else, and I scented an adventure.
“Going to find out what the inside of that lagoon is really like. No one ever put a boat into it yet. No, you can’t be in it this time: very sorry, but----”
“Well, you see, one isn’t absolutely sure of getting back again, in a place like this. Didn’t you see me put in grub and water and a compass? I don’t think you’d like a boat voyage down to Niué, if we happened to miss the train. The mate has the course, and could take her on, if I came to grief. No, it isn’t any use asking, I just can’t. Lower away.”
Well, if the pirate had been a shade less determined about the number in the boat, there would have been a pretty little tragedy of the sea, that gusty afternoon. One more in the boat had certainly turned the scale. For the wind was continually getting up, and the wretched _Duchess_ was rolling like a buoy, and the boat as she touched the water, with the captain and three men in her, was caught by the top of a wave, and dashed against the side of the ship. In a flash she was overturned, with a badly damaged thwart, and was washing about helplessly among the waves, with the four men clinging to her keel. The sea took her past the schooner like a rag. I had only time to run to the stern, before she was swept out of hearing, but I heard the pirate call as he disappeared in the trough of a wave, “Get out your camera, here’s the chance of your life!” Then the boat was gone, and for a moment the mate and I thought it was all over. “The sharks will have ’em if they don’t sink!” declared that officer, straining over the rail, while the Maori crew ran aimlessly about the deck, shouting with excitement.