180 WHALING 



fourth man to reach the cabin was a seaman named Lewis 

 who had been aloft as lookout when the row began, and had re- 

 mained there until he heard the firing from the cabin. Then, 

 since the natives held the upper deck and there was 

 no chance of his getting past them, he had jumped from the 

 rigging through the open hatch. The fall seriously ruptured 

 him, and before he was able to get out of the way, the natives 

 split his ear and otherwise wounded him with spades. Dodging 

 their thrusts and scrambling aft as best he could, he took a 

 loaded musket from one of the boys, on entering the cabin, and 

 stepped to the companionway. He succeeded in firing the 

 musket, but at the same moment a native struck him on the 

 knee with a spade and severed the joint. He called for 

 help, and Mr. Jones got him back into the cabin and hastily 

 bandaged his leg; and there he sat, without a word of complaint 

 or a sign of pain, loading muskets for nearly an hour. 



A fifth man, Daniel Wood, was so badly cut up by spades 

 and so weak from loss of blood that when he succeeded in reach- 

 ing the cabin by the same route the others had taken, he could 

 not in any way join in the fight. And he brought them news 

 that the first officer was dead. The sixth, and last, was the 

 discreet blacksmith, who finally came to the conclusion that 

 after all he would be safer in the cabin than anywhere else. 



Meanwhile, the natives had been sending their canoes to the 

 island, with one man in each, for reinforcements. But Mr. 

 Jones, observing this activity from the stern ports, had directed 

 at the returning canoes a fire so steady and accurate that not 

 one succeeded in reaching the ship. When with a crash the 

 natives cut from her davits the starboard quarter-boat, which 

 capsized when she fell, the sharpshooter waited until she cleared 

 the stem of the ship and easily drove from the boat the three 

 natives who were drifting away, one of whom appeared to have 

 been crippled by the fall. 



''When the ship was hove to," Mr. Jones wrote in his log 

 book, ''the helm was put alee. The wind being very light 

 and the sea perfectly smooth, it had remained in that posi- 

 tion. Now we were convinced that someone was disturbing 



