ENEMIES 185 



yard, Captain Hower Norris master, lowered for whales, all 

 hands taking part in the chase except Captain Norris, a boy, and 

 three Kingsmill Islanders, members of the crew, who stayed be- 

 hind as ship-keepers. So craftily did the Islanders act, that 

 neither captain nor boy had the slightest reason to suspect 

 them of treachery, until one of them, stepping up behind the 

 captain, sliced his head clean oft with a single blow of a cut- 

 ting spade. The boy fled to the rigging and the savages ran 

 amuck. 



On the long pull back to the Sharon the boats could see her 

 rising and dipping with the slow seas. But faint, wild shrieks 

 greeted them as they came within earshot, and when the boats 

 lay together under the side of the ship, the three Kingsmill 

 Islanders, dancing and howling up and down the deck, threat- 

 ened the officers and men with belaying pins, hammers, axes, 

 cutting spades, and harpoons. 



Of all those in the boats, only one man had the courage and 

 presence of mind to meet the emergency, and he, curiously 

 enough, like Silas Jones of the Awashonks, was a young third 

 mate, Benjamin Clough by name. Darkness helped him, and 

 volunteering to board the Sharon single-handed, he climbed 

 through a stern port into the cabin where the captain had kept 

 a supply of muskets and cutlasses. He was in the act of load- 

 ing a musket when one of the Islanders discovered and attacked 

 him. In the furious fight that followed, Clough, though badly 

 wounded, had just succeeded in knocking out his antagonist, 

 when a second Islander rushed down the companion ladder and 

 flung a spade at the young third officer, which cut his arm 

 nearly off. Yet somehow Clough, before he fell, managed to 

 raise his loaded musket and shot the fellow dead. The third 

 Islander, discovering that he was left alone, jumped overboard. 



At that, the men from the boats came swarming on board and, 

 however poor friends they had been on the defensive, they made 

 good nurses for, so successfully did they care for Clough's 

 wounds, that on the next voyage of the Sharon he sailed in her 

 as master. 



The Islander that jumped overboard, finding himself presently 



