"Haynes aimed a blow at something that swooped with great wings vibrating, and filling the air with a frightful, menacing resonance."
"Looks good to me!" said Haynes, the taller of the two men who had just run their little craft into the sheltered cove.
"Me for the hay this night!" agreed Manton with hearty satisfaction.
Three days had elapsed since they, sole survivors and once proud owners, had abandoned the Tahuana with its back broken on an uncharted reef somewhere south of the Solomons. For the hurricane that had licked into its maw their crew of three Trobiand "boys" had also left the Tahuana dismasted, a helpless wreck to drift in a dead calm to the one spot in that lonely waste where pink coral and surging seas would seal its fate.
By a twist of ironical fortune one small boat had come unscathed through the storm, and in this the partners had at once deserted the ruin of their hopes and many a hard-earned dollar. A desperate chance, but their only one, and this was not the first by many a one of desperate chances calmly taken and in their passing forgotten.
For two monotonous days they had in turn steadily sculled on a compass course—somewhat indefinite of determined goal, as was their point of departure—northward to the Solomons and Bougainville; the nearest approach to civilization, though almost certainly across four hundred miles of seldom-traversed waters. For two days not a breath had stirred the stagnant molten air, but on the morning of the third, nature quickened and from a rapturously hailed cats-paw it quickly freshened to a brisk breeze; toward noon it stiffened and a
