There was no incident until we got within sight of Tahiti. I was leaning against the bench, watching Peter’s leisurely progress with the boat. This boat was the one which had been cut in two by the whale. The other one was finished, painted, and bottom up on the after house. Captain Nelson meant to trade all his spare boats, which had been stove, among the islands. Not that those boats were not good and seaworthy—Peter’s workmanship could not be other than that; but the captain seemed to think that they were more desirable for trading purposes than for chasing whales. I did not know about that, but there was no more chasing whales to be done on that voyage. Whaleboats were much in demand in all the islands, and would bring a good price in trade. So these boats, glistening in their coats of fresh paint, were put on the after house, and covered with an old sail to keep them from blistering in the hot sun.

Peter had been saying nothing, but pottering pleasantly about his pleasant work, a half-smile on his leathery face. There was a fascination for me in watching Peter, and I had said nothing either. There is always a fascination in watching a thoroughgoing workman, but especially a boatbuilder or a shipbuilder or a blacksmith; a real smith, not merely a shoer of horses. It is so with me, at least, although there is almost as much in watching a really skilful cabinet-maker like Oman. I suppose the cabinet-maker’s work should possess more fascination, as such a man has progressed several grades beyond the others. Perhaps it is a little beyond me, or it may be because of my contempt for glue. A cabinet-maker uses a deal of glue.

Peter looked up at last, and glanced ahead. When he looked down at his work again his half-smile had broadened into a grin.

“There’s Tahiti, lad,” he said.

I nodded. “Yes, I know. There’s nothing to see yet.”

Peter was bending over his work, and he gave a queer chuckle.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “You never can tell what you may see until you look. You might see an old friend, Timmie. A real sailor always knows what shows above the horizon, and sometimes what’s beyond, if it ain’t too far.”

This speech of Peter’s nettled me a little, for I thought I was a real sailor by this time. I looked around carefully. It was pretty clear, with occasional heavy clouds, and deep shadows under them. There was one such cloud away down to the northward, and I thought that I saw a vessel in its shadow. The clouds were moving briskly, and as I watched, the sun suddenly shone there, and illumined the topsail yards of a schooner and the upper half of her lower sails. It was like a spotlight in a theatre, suddenly shoving the vessel into plain view against the shadows which surrounded her. There was but one such rig in all the seven seas. It was the Annie Battles. She had left Papeete within an hour, probably, and was standing to the northward.

I sighed. “Just our luck,” I said. “If she had only been a few hours later!”

“Would you call it good luck, or bad, Timmie?”

“I should call it hard luck, Peter. Would n’t you?”

“Well,” he answered slowly, “she ain’t mine, and I don’t believe in looking for trouble. I suppose Cap’n Coffin calls it hard luck. You can see for yourself.” And he jerked his head in the direction of the after house.

There stood Captain Coffin, a glass glued to his eye. He said nothing, but he had no need to. Anybody could tell from his face what his thoughts were.

At Papeete we got our water, and our extra casks, although some of them had to be lashed on deck, as the hold was full. It took several days to get this done, for extra casks were not plentiful, and the men could not be denied some liberty ashore. The pleasures that Papeete offered to our shore-famished men were alluring, and it was hard to get them back. I could understand this, for I went ashore too. I managed to resist the allurements of the place, thanks more to Peter than to any tendency on my own part to asceticism, and I had a thoroughly good time. When I got back to the ship I found that Captain Coffin had been making inquiries, and had found that the Annie Battles, under the name of the Seafoam, had sailed on a trading trip among the islands to the eastward, the Paumotus and the Marquesas. He was as excited as a boy, and full of eagerness and glee.

We got our men back at last, and sailed to the northward. I was surprised at this, for we were bound home, and for the most rapid passage around the Horn we should have started out to the southward; but I thought it likely that Captain Coffin had persuaded Captain Nelson to have a last try at the Battles. If she stopped at the islands, as she would, making frequent stops, we should be close on her heels, and might reasonably hope to catch her. At one of the Marquesas Islands, too, there was a well-known spring of very good water, emptying on the beach. Whalers often touched there for water, and it might have been in Captain Nelson’s mind to fill up his casks there for the long run around the Horn.

The days passed, and nothing happened. Whatever eagerness I had felt oozed away; but Captain Coffin’s did not, I judged. He was silent, restless, tense with it, especially as we began to raise the Paumotus, one after another. These are atolls, with the usual coral reefs, sea-beach, and lagoon, none of them more than a few feet above sea level. The topmasts of the Battles would be easily seen above them, unless some unusually tall coconut trees were in the way. We did not go far into the archipelago, for it is dangerous navigation there for a vessel as large as the Clearchus, and one no more easily manageable. The passages are filled with hidden dangers, and the currents swift and treacherous.

We had been searching, in a superficial way, for a week or more, when, one morning, dawn showed us a small atoll, a few miles long. We heard the dull boom of the surf, and with the growing light we saw a long white beach, crowned with green vegetation. A few stunted coco-palms showed their green tufts, and beyond the palms the familiar topsail yards of the Battles. There was no sign of habitation, and we found out later that this atoll was uninhabited, and visited only occasionally by canoe parties from some other atoll, in search of eggs, or fish, or adventure. At the time it seemed strange to me that somebody from the crew of the Battles had not seen us. The Clearchus must have been as familiar to them as the Battles was to us. Then I concluded that they had not seen us because they were close under the palms, and had had no lookout to seaward, and perhaps had been asleep. I was right in one thing: they had been asleep. They were not asleep now, for, as we worked around to find the opening into the lagoon, we heard faint noises, as if they were shouting to one another.

When we reached a point from which we could see into the lagoon, we saw that the schooner was plainly aground; there were a number of large canoes drawn up on the shore; and there on the beach was the crew of the Battles, surrounded by natives, and fighting for their lives. I heard no guns, and supposed that they must have been lured ashore by the prospect of trade, and then attacked.

Captain Nelson did nothing immediately, but turned to Captain Coffin. I chanced to be near them at the time.

“What do you think, Fred?” he asked. “Shall we try to help your crew there? They’re no better than pirates, and I’ve no doubt the Kanakas have the right of it.” Some particularly villainous example of thievery on the part of the Battles was probably at the bottom of the quarrel. “But I suppose we’ve got to.”

Captain Coffin nodded. “I want to settle their hash myself.”

I was on tiptoe with that laughing exhilaration that always came upon me before a fight of any kind, and I found that I had been afraid that Captain Nelson would stay out of it.

I dived below, where I gathered all the arms from the cabin; and, the steward helping me, I got them on deck. I found three boats down. They were Mr. Macy’s, Captain Coffin’s, and mine, in which the captain was going in place of Mr. Brown. There was some danger to the ship in leaving her so lightly manned, for the islanders might take it into their heads to attack her; but he took the chance. I had an oak wagon-spoke in addition to a spade. I had found it among the firewood taken on at New Bedford. A wagon-spoke is an excellent weapon, and that was not the only time I used one.

It took us some time to find the opening in the reef. There were several false leads, and we found the break narrow when we hit upon it. I wondered that the Battles had been able to get through.

The fighting was going on at the head of the lagoon, a little over half a mile from the point where we entered, too far off to see what had been happening. All we could see from that distance was a confused mass of men, and all we heard was a confused shouting. After we had straightened out on the course to the beach, I saw nothing but the backs and the oars of the men before me, Captain Nelson at the steering oar, and the other boats out of the tail of my eye. We were a little in advance.

The shouting grew in volume as we approached the shore, but I heard no white man’s shout. They had no breath to waste. We were perhaps an eighth of a mile from shore when Captain Nelson spoke quietly, saying that some twenty of the islanders were swimming out to meet us.

“Be ready with your knives and spades, boys,” he said. “Don’t let them get hold of your oars.”

The men were not supposed to have knives—at least, not with sharp points, but two or three of the Portuguese produced them, and took them between their teeth; and there were two knives in each boat, and the hatchet.

However, we pulled away from them and grounded on the beach. The shock of it very nearly sent me on my back in the bottom of the boat. I saw Captain Nelson covering our landing with his Spencer, and I saw him raise it to his shoulder and fire once. Then we tumbled out, I with my spade and my wagon-spoke. A spear whistled over my shoulder, making a flesh wound, and I gave a roar, and rushed upon the irregular line of islanders. As I ran, I remember vaguely that I laughed and shouted.

I have no clear recollection of what happened, but I do know that I had no fear of anything, I had an utter insensibility to pain, and a fierce joy in mere fighting. My wagon-spoke was a more handy weapon than the spade, which I used to ward off blows aimed at me, while I wielded the wagon-spoke as a club. It was a very good club, well-balanced and heavy, with sharp corners on the hub end. I was pretty strong then, and could swing it to some purpose. The natives—I do not like to call them savages—had been armed with spears of hard wood, as dangerous as steel-pointed spears, and with a war-club of peculiar shape, made of ironwood. Most of them had cast their spears by this time, and fought with their clubs, much as I did.

I do not know just how many islanders there were, but there must have been well over a hundred altogether. There were eighteen of us, and about twenty in the crew of the Battles; but many of the Battles’ men had been killed or disabled before we got there. There could not have been more than a half a dozen left on their feet. I saw Mr. Wallet transfixed by a spear within six feet of me, the spear in the hands of a gigantic islander. I cannot remember that I felt a pang of pity when I saw Mr. Wallet go down. I do not think that I had any feeling whatever, or that I should have had whoever it had been.

The man next to Mr. Wallet was evidently of a different calibre. He was bleeding from many wounds, and fighting like a fiend. The man with the spear wrenched it free from Wallet’s body, and lunged at this man. He leaped forward, tore the spear from the other’s grasp, and like lightning he plunged it into his body. It went clear through and came out at the back. It could not be got out again, as there were deep cuts upon it, making a series of saw-teeth on the edge of the long blade, and these teeth stuck on the ribs. He left it sticking there, looked quickly around, and caught sight of Captain Coffin. Apparently he had not seen him before.

I found out a little later that the man was Drew, but I guessed as much then. He stood still for a moment, and I saw the changing expressions chase each other across his face. There was despair—for an instant—and then a hardening, and the fierce light came back to his eyes, and a scornful smile curled his lips, but hope was gone. Here was Coffin. That meant that he would be carried back and hanged if he survived this fight. He had to die, anyway, and he preferred to die fighting; but there were two or three of us that he meant to take with him. His first move was against Captain Coffin, who was engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with two natives. These natives, I think, were not much given to hand-to-hand work. They preferred to stand off at a safe distance from their enemies and call names. In this case they had depended upon their numbers, and had been drawn into the close work and could not get out; but they were brave, although they preferred the method of ambush and massacre.

Up to this time I had been in a condition of exaltation with the pure love of fighting. Man is a fighting animal. If he were not he would never have got so far. Whether right or wrong, it seems to me hopeless to try to crush out that instinct—but that is by the way. The events just described had made their impression on my eye, but at the time they made none on my brain. Now I roused from my daze, my brain resumed its activity with a rush, and I yelled a warning.

Captain Coffin either did not hear me or did not dare to turn his head. Drew had grabbed up a war-club lying beside a dead savage, and was trying to get at him, but his way was not clear. I leaped for him and yelled again. Other islanders were coming to the help of those engaged with Captain Coffin, and he was becoming the centre of the fighting. He was much the biggest white man there. Macy was nearly as tall, but did not give the impression of bigness and power that Captain Coffin did. I caught a glimpse of Mr. Macy coming up on the other side of Captain Coffin, and remember wondering what had become of the Prince. It was the kind of a fight that I had imagined he would love. At the risk of my life I glanced about, and saw him just behind me, as if he was following to see that no harm came to me. There was the gleam of battle in his eye, his face was set, his lips drawn back in a tiger-snarl, showing his white teeth. They shone in his ebony face like a light at sea on a dark night.

Captain Coffin might have heard my warning yells, but he gave no sign. It would have been death for him to look back. Drew was slowly making his way toward him, striking at the natives who got in his way. A big native disputed the way, and I got almost within reach. The islander gave before Drew’s ferocious assault. Drew let him go, and pressed on toward Captain Coffin. I leaped again, and got within reach as he was in the act of bringing his club down on Captain Coffin’s head. I struck with all my might, and the blow went true. Drew’s wrist was broken, his head was laid open in a long line, and he tottered. At that instant I heard the dull report of a Spencer. Drew’s body whirled about, and crumpled in a heap. Captain Nelson had done it, and the bullet had gone through Drew’s body, striking down one of the natives.

Relieved of the anxiety of the moment, I dropped my hands, and drew a long breath. That was no time for dropping my hands, and I was brought quickly back to the present by the prick of a spear. I squirmed away, and looked up to see a club descending. There was no time to use my club, or to raise my spade, which hung in my left hand. There was a rush beside me, and the Prince, apparently empty-handed, launched himself at my assailant. My head was saved, and both went down, just out of my reach. The Prince had broken his lance, but had saved the blade, which he plunged into the throat of the islander. At the same instant an ironwood war-club crashed down on his head.

At that sight my fury returned. I have no knowledge of what followed in the next half-hour. I knew that not one of the Battles’ crew was left on his feet, and I knew dimly that Kane was on one side of me, fighting with a wild joy, and that on the other Mr. Macy was fighting with equal fury. I have no doubt that he saved my life many times, for I knew no caution, and my only thought was to avenge the Prince. Mr. Macy’s fury was of the cold kind—a cool head and a hot heart—which does so much more damage than a mere blind rage like mine. At last I realized that the islanders were trying to get at our boats.

There were five or six times as many of them as of us, but Captain Nelson managed to keep his force between them and our boats. None of his men was killed except the Prince, but nearly all were wounded more or less seriously, and all were weary. I know that, at last, with returning sanity, I found myself hardly able to lift my club, and utterly unable to strike again with my reddened spade. We were being forced back to the boats. It looked like a day for the islanders, and if they would have let us we would have withdrawn. I heard nothing but a tumult of sound, and I could not see well.

Suddenly there was a great shout from behind the natives, and I saw a considerable body of men break through the sparse vegetation which crowned the beach. It happened before my eyes; a crowd of men—white men, twenty-five or thirty of them—armed with lances, spades, and knives, issuing from that tangle to seaward, and rushing down on the rear of the islanders. They, poor chaps, gave one glance, then broke and ran. Some of them ran to their canoes, others ran directly into the water, and swam away, full tilt. The canoes followed, and we let them go.

I knew we ought to put after them and see that they did no harm to the ship, but I could not have pulled a pound. Neither could most of the others. I could only stand there, my hands hanging limp at my sides, and gaze after the canoes. I watched them out of sight through the passage to the sea. I was dimly conscious of a young chap who walked around me, looking me over, but I paid him no attention. At last he stood still before me, grinning. He poked me in the ribs. I squirmed, for my ribs were sore.

“Hello, Tim,” he said.

I looked at him then; looked at him long and hard, while he stood and grinned. It was Jimmy Appleby.