Nothing much happened at Suava.Bichu, the native cook, deserted.
The Minota dragged anchor.It blew heavy squalls of wind and rain.
The mate, Mr.Jacobsen, and Wada were prostrated with fever.Our Solomon sores increased and multiplied.And the cockroaches on board held a combined Fourth of July and Coronation Parade.They selected midnight for the time, and our tiny cabin for the place.
They were from two to three inches long; there were hundreds of them, and they walked all over us.When we attempted to pursue them, they left solid footing, rose up in the air, and fluttered about like humming-birds.They were much larger than ours on the Snark.But ours are young yet, and haven't had a chance to grow.
Also, the Snark has centipedes, big ones, six inches long.We kill them occasionally, usually in Charmian's bunk.I've been bitten twice by them, both times foully, while I was asleep.But poor Martin had worse luck.After being sick in bed for three weeks, the first day he sat up he sat down on one.Sometimes I think they are the wisest who never go to Carcassonne.
Later on we returned to Malu, picked up seven recruits, hove up anchor, and started to beat out the treacherous entrance.The wind was chopping about, the current upon the ugly point of reef setting strong.Just as we were on the verge of clearing it and gaining open sea, the wind broke off four points.The Minota attempted to go about, but missed stays.Two of her anchors had been lost at Tulagi.Her one remaining anchor was let go.Chain was let out to give it a hold on the coral.Her fin keel struck bottom, and her main topmast lurched and shivered as if about to come down upon our heads.She fetched up on the slack of the anchors at the moment a big comber smashed her shoreward.The chain parted.It was our only anchor.The Minota swung around on her heel and drove headlong into the breakers.
Bedlam reigned.All the recruits below, bushmen and afraid of the sea, dashed panic-stricken on deck and got in everybody's way.At the same time the boat's crew made a rush for the rifles.They knew what going ashore on Malaita meant--one hand for the ship and the other hand to fight off the natives.What they held on with I don't know, and they needed to hold on as the Minota lifted, rolled, and pounded on the coral.The bushmen clung in the rigging, too witless to watch out for the topmast.The whale-boat was run out with a tow-line endeavouring in a puny way to prevent the Minota from being flung farther in toward the reef, while Captain Jansen and the mate, the latter pallid and weak with fever, were resurrecting a scrap-anchor from out the ballast and rigging up a stock for it.Mr.
Caulfeild, with his mission boys, arrived in his whale-boat to help.
When the Minota first struck, there was not a canoe in sight; but like vultures circling down out of the blue, canoes began to arrive from every quarter.The boat's crew, with rifles at the ready, kept them lined up a hundred feet away with a promise of death if they ventured nearer.And there they clung, a hundred feet away, black and ominous, crowded with men, holding their canoes with their paddles on the perilous edge of the breaking surf.In the meantime the bushmen were flocking down from the hills armed with spears, Sniders, arrows, and clubs, until the beach was massed with them.
To complicate matters, at least ten of our recruits had been enlisted from the very bushmen ashore who were waiting hungrily for the loot of the tobacco and trade goods and all that we had on board.
The Minota was honestly built, which is the first essential for any boat that is pounding on a reef.Some idea of what she endured may be gained from the fact that in the first twenty-four hours she parted two anchor-chains and eight hawsers.Our boat's crew was kept busy diving for the anchors and bending new lines.There were times when she parted the chains reinforced with hawsers.And yet she held together.Tree trunks were brought from ashore and worked under her to save her keel and bilges, but the trunks were gnawed and splintered and the ropes that held them frayed to fragments, and still she pounded and held together.But we were luckier than the Ivanhoe, a big recruiting schooner, which had gone ashore on Malaita several months previously and been promptly rushed by the natives.
The captain and crew succeeded in getting away in the whale-boats, and the bushmen and salt-water men looted her clean of everything portable.