or the protection of the pearl
fisheries.

At last they opened a deep and still bight, wooded to the water's edge;
and lying in the roadstead a caravel, and three boats by her. And at
that sight there was not a man but was on deck at once, and not a mouth
but was giving its opinion of what should be done. Some were for sailing
right into the roadstead, the breeze blowing fresh toward the shore (as
it usually does throughout those islands in the afternoon). However,
seeing the billows break here and there off the bay's mouth, they
thought it better, for fear of rocks, to run by quietly, and then
send in the pinnace and the boat. Yeo would have had them show Spanish
colors, for fear of alarming the caravel; but Amyas stoutly refused,
"counting it," he said, "a mean thing to tell a lie in that way, unless
in extreme danger, or for great ends of state."

So holding on their course till they were shut out by the next point,
they started; Cary in the largest boat with twenty men, and Amyas in
the smaller one with fifteen more; among whom was John Brimblecombe,
who must needs come in his cassock and bands, with an old sword of his
uncle's which he prized mightily.

When they came to the bight's mouth, they found, as they had expected,
coral rocks, and too many of them; so that they had to run along the
edge of the reef a long way before they could find a passage for the
boats. While they were so doing, and those of them who were new to the
Indies were admiring through the clear element those living flower-beds,
and subaqueous gardens of Nereus and Amphitrite, there suddenly appeared
below what Yeo called "a school of sharks," some of them nearly as long
as the boat, who looked up at them wistfully enough out of their wicked
scowling eyes.

"Jack," said Amyas, who sat next to him, "look how that big fellow
eyes thee: he has surely taken a fancy to that plump hide of thine, and
thinks thou wouldst eat as tender as any sucking porker."

Jack turned very pale, but said nothing.

Now, as it befell, just then that very big fellow, seeing a parrot-fish
come out of a cleft of the coral, made at him from below, as did two or
three more; the poor fish finding no other escape, leaped clean into the
air, and almost aboard the boat; while just where he had come out of
the water, three or four great brown shagreened noses clashed together
within two yards of Jack as he sat, each showing its horrible rows of
saw teeth, and then sank s