Читать книгу Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land. A story of old Fiji онлайн

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As we neared what we felt to be our doom—for it was impossible to alter the course of the schooner, which continued to be driven before the wind under a storm-jib—the captain told us we had two chances, though very small ones. One was to be driven in at the reef-opening, which is usually found opposite a river or creek, and where the water is generally of sufficient depth to admit of the largest vessel entering. The other was to jump the barrier. If the vessel took the reef in a narrow place it was possible for her, by great good fortune, to ride clear over it on the back of a wave into smooth water, but the chances were ten thousand to one that she would be caught on the obstruction, or perhaps be dropped by a receding billow on a pointed coral patch and be shivered to fragments.

The members of the ship’s company prepared themselves for the crisis of their fate in the manner which seemed best to them. The skipper descended to the cuddy, and occupied himself in gazing fondly upon a miniature painting of a young woman which he took from his sea-chest. The mate found some relief in turning up at hazard passages of Scripture in an old Bible, opening the page by inserting a pin at random in the closed leaves. The sailors discovered some rum in the hold, and my mind was busy with a hundred plans, rejected as soon as conceived, for buoying myself up until I could float into the smooth water on the landward side of the reef; for that the schooner would go to pieces and leave me like a bit of driftwood in the spray I had not the slightest doubt.