umps of the
lagoon. All circumstances were in our favour, the light behind, the sun
low, the wind still fresh and steady, and the tide about the turn. A
moment later we shot at racing speed betwixt two pier heads of broken
water; the lead began to be cast, the captain to bawl down his anxious
directions, the schooner to tack and dodge among the scattered dangers
of the lagoon; and at one bell in the first dog watch, we had come
to our anchor off the north-east end of Middle Brooks Island, in five
fathoms water. The sails were gasketted and covered, the boats emptied
of the miscellaneous stores and odds and ends of sea-furniture, that
accumulate in the course of a voyage, the kedge sent ashore, and the
decks tidied down: a good three-quarters of an hour's work, during
which I raged about the deck like a man with a strong toothache. The
transition from the wild sea to the comparative immobility of the lagoon
had wrought strange distress among my nerves: I could not hold still
whether in hand or foot; the slowness of the men, tired as dogs after
our rough experience outside, irritated me like something personal; and
the irrational screaming of the sea-birds saddened me like a dirge. It
was a relief when, with Nares, and a couple of hands, I might drop into
the boat and move off at last for the Flying Scud.

"She looks kind of pitiful, don't she?" observed the captain, nodding
towards the wreck, from which we were separated by some half a mile.
"Looks as if she didn't like her berth, and Captain Trent had used her
badly. Give her ginger, boys!" he added to the hands, "and you can all
have shore liberty to-night to see the birds and paint the town red."

We all laughed at the pleasantry, and the boat skimmed the faster over
the rippling face of the lagoon. The Flying Scud would have seemed small
enough beside the wharves of San Francisco, but she was some thrice the
size of the Norah Creina, which had been so long our continent; and
as we craned up at her wall-sides, she impressed us with a mountain
magnitude. She lay head to the reef, where the huge blue wall of the
rollers was for ever ranging up and crumbling down; and to gain her
starboard side, we must pass below the stern. The rudder was hard aport,
and we could read the legend:

FLYING SCUD

HULL

On the other side, about the break of the poop, some half a fathom of
rope ladder trailed over the rail, and by this we made our entrance.

She was a roomy