and
doing what he's told. If Coe had ordered him to set off the dynamite and
blow up the ship, he would have said "Aye, aye, sir!" and obeyed,
respectful and willing, like the first-class seaman and navigator he
was. He had served in the Belgian navy, and the habit had stuck to him.
But in all of us, after all--me and Lum and John Rau and the Nieue
steward--it was Coe's spirit that had raised us to this pitch, and he
had blown a little of his own breath into every one of us. We were all
Elijah Coe's that day, and it was only afterwards it came over us how
different we had acted from our proper selves.

Well, as I said, it was drawing toward six bells, and we were keyed up
tremendous, as we might expect to see the result of our work now any
minute; and it was a shuddering thing to think of sending up another,
and him a child. We all watched Coe out of the corner of our eye as he
went on smoking his cigar, and every time he took out his watch and
looked at it it seemed like my heart stopped beating.

"Three o'clock, boys!" he says, rising business-like from his chair,
while Lum looked up expectant, and my gizzard seemed to shrink inside
me. "Three o'clock, boys!"

He hadn't no more nor got the words out of his mouth when Rau ripped out
there was a canoe coming off, and we all ran pellmell for the rail. Sure
enough, there was an outrigger aiming straight for us, and the fellar in
it was bent double and paddling that fast that the water spurted at the
bow like it was a race. When he got within a cable's length he stopped,
and waved something he had in his hand, and shouted a lot of stuff we
couldn't make head or tail of. Coe made motions to him to come nearer,
and Rau and me did the same, till the fellar got back something of his
nerve, paddling with one hand and holding the little board aloft in the
other (like he might a flag of truce), and venturing toward us slower
and slower, till at last Coe reached down and took the thing from him
standing up.

It was a slab of fresh-cut _fuafua_, about a foot long by three inches
wide, and on it, written, as I heard afterwards, in blood and spit and
gunpowder, was a message from Mrs. Tweedie herself--not many words on
it, and them printed, for she only had a pointed stick by way of a pen,
but saying as how she was unharmed and was being brought back fast, and
please, he wasn't to trice up any more of Afiola's family.

The captain read it aloud to us about a dozen times, and the