s to keep our
feet, and began to make us sea-sick. After half an hour or more of this,
we at last saw a chance of getting out of the rip into a side eddy; and,
putting forth all our strength, we just succeeded in doing so, only to
be menaced by a fresh and more alarming danger.

Yorke, dashing the pouring perspiration from his brow with his hand,
had just stood up to get a look at the brigantine and cutter, when he
uttered an oath.

"By God, we're in for it now! Look, here's four canoes, filled with
niggers, heading dead on for us. The beggars see us, too!"

I stood up beside him, and saw, about a quarter of a mile away, four
canoes, each of which was carrying six or eight natives, coming towards
us at a furious rate. They were, like all New Britain canoes, very low
down in the water, which, together with our own troubles when we were in
the tide rip, had prevented our seeing them long before.

"Lucky we have not wasted any of our cartridges" said Yorke grimly;
"we'll give them all the fight they want. But let them get closer, while
we head back for the ships. We _must_ get out of this current--we can
lick the niggers easy enough; but if we get into that tide-rip again,
we'll be carried out of sight of the brigantine by midday."

Plunging our paddles into the water, we sent our bamboo craft along till
we were in absolute safety as far as the tide-rip was concerned. Then
Yorke laid down his paddle.

"We're all right now, Drake; and now we'll give these man-chawing
beggars a bit of a surprise. They mean to knock us on the head in
another ten minutes, and take our carcasses ashore for to-night's
dinner. You are the younger man, and can shoot better than I, so I'll be
polite and give you first show. Sight for five hundred yards for a trial
shot, at the leading canoe. But wait a minute--don't stand up."

He quickly piled up the young coconuts in a firm heap, and then stood
over me, his own rifle in hand, whilst I knelt on the bamboos and placed
my rifle on the top of the heap of coconuts.

I am now, at this time of life, ashamed of the savage instinct that
in those days filled me with a certain joy in destroying human life,
unthinkingly, and without compunction. But I had been brought up in a
rough school, among men who thought it not only justifiable, but correct
and proper to shoot a man--black, or white, or brown, or yellow--who
had done them any wrong. It had been my lot, in the Solomon Islands, to
witness one o