In the course of three days we reached the mouth of the river, and prepared the sail for the trip across the bay to the Bangor. Just as everything was in readiness, one of those peculiar and rapid changes in the weather, that are so common here in the tropics near the equator, took place. A great blue-black cloud, looking like an immense cartridge, came up from the west. Through it played vivid flashes of lightning, and around it was a red haze. "A nasty animal," I heard the bo's'n tell the captain, and yet I was foolishly delighted when they decided to risk a blow and put out to sea. The sky on all sides grew darker from hour to hour. A smell of sulphur came to our nostrils. It was oppressively hot; not a breath of wind was stirring. The sail flapped uselessly against the mast, and the men labored at the oars, while streams of sweat ran from their bodies.
The captain had just taken down the mast, when, without a moment's warning, the gale struck us and the boat half filled with water. We managed to head it with the wind, and were soon driving with the rapidity of a cannon-ball over the boiling and surging waters. It was a fearful gale; we blew for hours before it, ofttimes in danger of a volcanic reef, again almost sunk by a giant wave. I baled until I was completely exhausted. But the long-boat was a stanch little craft, and there were plenty of men to manage it, so as long as we could keep her before the wind, the captain felt no great anxiety as to our safety.
At about six bells in the afternoon, the wind fell away, and the rain came down in torrents, leaving us to pitch about on the rapidly decreasing waves, wet to the skin and unequal to another effort. We were within a mile of a rocky island that rose like a half-ruined castle from the ocean. The Dyak soldiers called it Satang Island, and I have sailed past it many a time since. Without waiting for the word, we rowed to it and around it, before we found a suitable beach on which to land. One end of the island rose precipitous and sheer above the beach a hundred feet, and ended in a barren plateau of some two dozen acres. The remainder comprised some hundred acres of sand and rocks, on which were half a dozen cocoanut trees and a few yams. Along the beach we found a large number of turtles' eggs.