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The captain had just taken down the mast, when, without a moment’s warning, the gale struck us and the boat half filled with water. We managed to head it with the wind, and were soon driving with the rapidity of a cannon-ball over the boiling and surging waters. It was a fearful gale; we blew for hours before it, ofttimes in danger of a volcanic reef, again almost sunk by a giant wave. I baled until I was completely exhausted. But the long-boat was a stanch little craft, and there were plenty of men to manage it, so as long as we could keep her before the wind, the captain felt no great anxiety as to our safety.

III

At about six bells in the afternoon, the wind fell away, and the rain came down in torrents, leaving us to pitch about on the rapidly decreasing waves, wet to the skin and unequal to another effort. We were within a mile of a rocky island that rose like a half-ruined castle from the ocean. The Dyak soldiers called it Satang Island, and I have sailed past it many a time since. Without waiting for the word, we rowed to it and around it, before we found a suitable beach on which to land. One end of the island rose precipitous and sheer above the beach a hundred feet, and ended in a barren plateau of some two dozen acres. The remainder comprised some hundred acres of sand and rocks, on which were half a dozen cocoanut trees and a few yams. Along the beach we found a large number of turtles’ eggs.

The captain, remembering the Rajah’s caution in regard to pirates, decided not to make a light, but we were wet and hungry and overcame his scruples, and soon had a huge fire and a savory repast of coffee, turtles’ eggs, and yams. At midnight it was extinguished, and a watch stationed on top of the plateau. Toward morning I clambered grumblingly up the narrow, almost perpendicular sides of the rift that cut into the rocky watch-tower. I did not believe in pirates and was willing to take my chances in sleep. I paced back and forth, inhaling deep breaths of the rich tropical air; below me the waves beat in ripples against the rugged beach, casting off from time to time little flashes of phosphorescent light, and mirroring in their depths the hardly distinguishable outline of the Southern Cross. The salt smell of the sea was tinged with the spice-laden air of the near coast. Drowsiness came over me. I picked up a musket and paced around the little plateau. The moon had but just reached its zenith, making all objects easily discernible. The smooth storm-swept space before me reflected back its rays like a well-scrubbed quarter-deck; below were the dark outlines of my sleeping mates. I could hear the light wind rustling through the branches of the casuarina trees that fringed the shore. I paused and looked over the sea. Like a charge of electricity a curious sensation of fear shot through me. Then an intimation that some object had flashed between me and the moon. I rubbed my eyes and gazed in the air above, expecting to see a night bird or a bat. Then the same peculiar sensation came over me again, and I looked down in the water below just in time to see the long, keen, knife-like outline of a pirate prau glide as noiselessly as a shadow from a passing cloud into the gloom of the island. Its great, wide-spreading, dark red sails were set full to the wind, and hanging over its sides by ropes were a dozen naked Illanums, guiding the sensitive craft almost like a thing of life. Within the prau were two dozen fighting men, armed with their alligator hide buckler, long, steel-tipped spear, and ugly, snake-like kris. A third prau followed in the wake of the other two, and all three were lost in the blackness of the overhanging cliffs.