When the transfer was completed, it was evident that the current was close upon its turn, and unless they should leave the island soon, they would be compelled to wait perhaps twelve or twenty-four hours longer.
Since the sea was very calm, Hyde Brazzier proposed that the schooner should be taken outside and anchored directly over the pearl-oyster bed, so that sail could be hoisted as soon as they were ready. There was a slight risk in the action, but it was done, and after some careful maneuvering the _Coral_ was secured in position.
It looked very magnanimous and somewhat stupid for Abe Storms to volunteer to go down in his coat of armor and scoop the oysters into a huge basket, for the very parties who had tried so hard to drown him when similarly engaged the day before. Nothing, it would seem, could be more absurd, and yet the reader is requested to suspend judgment until he shall have read the following chapter.
All this was done, and in the course of the succeeding two hours fully three-fourths of the oysters scattered over that particular bed were dumped upon the deck of the _Coral_, and Abe Storms, pretty well exhausted, was pulled to the surface. The captain and mate, with the armor, rowed themselves the short distance ashore in the small boat. The _Coral_ hoisted sail, and, heading out to sea, rapidly sped away over the Pacific.
And all this time the three mutineers felicitated themselves upon the manner in which they had gotten the best of the bargain. And yet, never in all their lives had they been so completely outwitted as they were by Abe Storms and Captain Jack Bergen, as we shall now proceed to show.
The three mutineers on board the schooner Coral had sailed away and disappeared from view on the face of the vast Pacific, and the captain and mate were left with little Inez alone upon a small, lonely member of the Paumotu Group, in the distant South Seas.
Inez was too young to realize the gravity of the situation, and she ran hither and thither, delighted with her new home, though she found the cabin too warm inside to be comfortable, and she made frequent draughts upon the spring of cool, clear water near which the former residents of the atoll had built the cabin. Then, too, she had found that there was considerable tropical fruit growing in the place, and she made such havoc among it that Captain Bergen felt impelled to caution her, if she should become sick on their hands, she would be apt to fare ill, for they had little medicine at command.