Well, as I said, it was drawing toward six bells, and we were keyed up tremendous, as we might expect to see the result of our work now any minute; and it was a shuddering thing to think of sending up another, and him a child. We all watched Coe out of the corner of our eye as he went on smoking his cigar, and every time he took out his watch and looked at it it seemed like my heart stopped beating.
"Three o'clock, boys!" he says, rising business-like from his chair, while Lum looked up expectant, and my gizzard seemed to shrink inside me. "Three o'clock, boys!"
He hadn't no more nor got the words out of his mouth when Rau ripped out there was a canoe coming off, and we all ran pellmell for the rail. Sure enough, there was an outrigger aiming straight for us, and the fellar in it was bent double and paddling that fast that the water spurted at the bow like it was a race. When he got within a cable's length he stopped, and waved something he had in his hand, and shouted a lot of stuff we couldn't make head or tail of. Coe made motions to him to come nearer, and Rau and me did the same, till the fellar got back something of his nerve, paddling with one hand and holding the little board aloft in the other (like he might a flag of truce), and venturing toward us slower and slower, till at last Coe reached down and took the thing from him standing up.
It was a slab of fresh-cut _fuafua_, about a foot long by three inches wide, and on it, written, as I heard afterwards, in blood and spit and gunpowder, was a message from Mrs. Tweedie herself--not many words on it, and them printed, for she only had a pointed stick by way of a pen, but saying as how she was unharmed and was being brought back fast, and please, he wasn't to trice up any more of Afiola's family.
The captain read it aloud to us about a dozen times, and then, his face working so he couldn't speak no more, he gripped hands with me, and then with John Rau, and not forgetting the Nieue steward, and then he went down the forward ladder, and I'm blest if he didn't put his arm round the Chink, and burst out sobbing--yes, sir, like a great overwrought girl, sitting on the tool chest, limp as a rag, and wiping his eyes with the cuff of his blue-striped panjammers, the Chinaman, patting him like he might a dog, saying, "Poor captain! Never you mind, captain! She all lite now, captain," while the prisoners broke out in a big gabble of how they were saved, and piped up with a hymn.