he reef as the boat pushed
off from the beach in the fast-gathering darkness; but who minds such
things with a native crew? So thought Von Hammer as he grasped the long,
swaying steer oar, and swung the whale-boat's head to the white line of
surf. 'Give it to her, boys; now's our chance--there's a bit of a lull
now, eh, Pulu? Bend to it, Ridan, my lad.'

Out shot the boat, Pulu pulling stroke, Ridan bow-oar, and two sturdy,
square-built Savage Islanders amidships. Surge after surge roared and
hissed past in the darkness, and never a drop of water wetted their
naked backs; and then, with a wild cry from the crew and a shouting
laugh from the steersman, she swept over and down the edge of the reef
and gained the deep water--a second too late! Ere she could rise from
the blackened trough a great curling roller towered high over, and then
with a bursting roar fell upon and smothered her. When she rose to the
surface Von Hammer was fifty feet away, clinging to the steer-oar. A
quick glance showed him that none of the crew were missing--they were
all holding on to the swamped boat and 'swimming' her out away from
the reef, and shouting loudly for him to come alongside. Pushing the
steer-oar before him, he soon reached the boat, and, despite his own
unwillingness, his crew insisted on his getting in. Then, each still
grasping the gunwale with one hand, they worked the boat out yard by
yard, swaying her fore and aft whenever a lull in the seas came, and
jerking the water out of her by degrees till the two Savage Islanders
were able to clamber in and bale out with the wooden bucket slung under
the after-thwart, while the white man kept her head to the sea. But the
current was setting them steadily along, parallel with the reef, and
every now and then a sea would tumble aboard and nearly fill her again.
At last, however, the Savage Islanders got her somewhat free of water,
and called to Pulu and Ridan to get in--there were plenty of spare
canoe-paddles secured along the sides in case of an emergency such as
this.

'Get in, Pulu, get in,' said Rfdan to the Samoan, in English; 'get in
quickly.'

But Pulu refused. He was a bigger and a heavier man than Rfdan, he said,
and the boat was not yet able to bear the weight of a fourth man. This
was true, and the supercargo, though he knew the awful risk the men
ran, and urged them to jump in and paddle, yet knew that the additional
weight of two such heavy men as Rfdan and Pulu meant de