Naturally enough I was anxious. I had on board trade goods which had cost £1,100, and of course had not one penny of insurance on them. The brigantine, however, was well insured, though I do not impute this fact as being the cause of the captain’s neglect of a sensible warning.
After supper, the captain turned in, while the mate and I, both feeling very uneasy, paced the deck till about nine o’clock, at which hour the wind had become perceptibly lighter, and the captain was called. He came on deck, trotted up and down in his pyjamas for a few minutes, sat on the rail, like a monkey on a fence, and then asked the mate snappishly what he was “scared about?”
The mate made no reply, and the captain was just going below again, when two fishing canoes, with four natives in each, came quite near us, both heading for the shore; and the skipper asked me to hail them and see if they had any fish to sell. I did so.
“No,” was the reply; “we are going back again, because much rain and wind is coming from the westward, and we want to get over the reef before the surf becomes too great.” Then one of them stood up and added—
“Why does not the ship go away quickly. This is a very bad place here when the wind and the sea come from the west. Your ship will be broken to pieces.”
“What do they say?” inquired the little man.
I translated what they had said.
“Bosh, I say again,” was the reply, “the glass has been as steady as a rock for the past three days,” and then, to my intense anger, he added an insinuation that my fears had led me to deliberately misinterpret what the natives had said. The retort I made was of so practical a nature that the mate had to assist the skipper to his feet.
A quarter of an hour later, as the mate and I still walked the deck, discussing the captain’s shortcomings, the wind died away suddenly, and then several of our native crew came aft, and said that a squall was coming up from the westward, and the mate, though neither he nor myself could then see any sign of it, went below and again called the captain.
He came on deck, with one hand covering his injured left optic, told me he would settle with me in the morning, and then took a long look astern, and there, certainly enough, was a long streak of black rising over the horizon. The mate stood by waiting his orders.
“It’s not coming near us,” said the little man more snappishly than ever, as he marched up and down the poop.
“I say it is,” said Laird bluntly, “and I consider this ship will be ashore, if we don’t slip and tow out a bit before it is too late.”
The mate’s manner had some effect on the obstinate little animal—“Oh, well, if there’s such a lot of old women on board, I’ll give in. Call the hands, and we’ll heave up.”
“Heave up!” echoed the mate in angry astonishment, “what’s the use of trying to heave up now! That squall will be on us in ten minutes, and if we had an hour to spare, it would be none too long. Why, man, it’s a dead calm, and the swell will send us into the surf on the reef quick enough without our dragging the ship into it. Reckon the best and only thing we can do, is down boats, and then slip cable right-away. We might get a show then to lay along the reef, and get clear.”
“I’m not going to lose a new cable and anchor to please any one,” was the stupid reply. (He could very easily have recovered both anchor and cable with the assistance of the natives on the following day, or indeed months after.)
Then he sang out to the men to man the windlass.
The hands, realising the danger, turned to with a will, but within five minutes the first breath of the squall caught us, and sent us ahead, as was evident by the way the slackened cable came in through the hawsepipe.
We had out fifty-five fathoms of chain, and before twenty-five were in, the squall was upon us properly; the brigantine went gracefully ahead, overran her anchor, plunged into the roaring breakers on the reef, and struck bows on.
In another moment or two a heavy sea caught her on the starboard quarter, canted her round, and dashed her broadside on to the reef with terrific violence. Then, fortunately for our lives, two or three further rollers sent her crashing along till she brought up against two or three coral boulders, whose tops were revealed every now and then by the backwash. In less than twenty minutes she was hopelessly bilged, and her decks swept by every sea.
We carried three boats, and our native sailors showed their pluck and skill by actually getting all three safely into the water, two on the lee side, and one on the other.
The captain, now conscious of his folly, became very modest, and gave his orders quietly. The crew, however, took no notice of him and looked to the mate. He (the captain) ordered me into the first boat, in which were the ship’s papers, charts, chronometer, &c. I refused, and said I preferred getting on shore in my own way.
I had seen that two native boys (passengers) had run out on to the bowsprit, and, watching their chance, had dropped over into a curling roller, and were carried safely ashore.
I had with me on board about nine hundred silver Mexican and Chili dollars—some in a cash box, the rest in a bag. Calling my native servant, Levi, I asked him if he thought all the boats would get ashore safely. He shook his head, said that it was doubtful, and that it would be better for me to throw the bag and the cash box over the lee side, where they were pretty sure to be recovered in the morning at low tide.