The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 3

CHAPTER 22

OUR situation, as it now appeared, was scarcely less dreadful thanwhen we had conceived ourselves entombed forever. We saw before us noprospect but that of being put to death by the savages, or of draggingout a miserable existence in captivity among them. We might, to be sure,conceal ourselves for a time from their observation among the fastnessesof the hills, and, as a final resort, in the chasm from which we hadjust issued; but we must either perish in the long polar winter throughcold and famine, or be ultimately discovered in our efforts to obtainrelief.

The whole country around us seemed to be swarming with savages, crowdsof whom, we now perceived, had come over from the islands to thesouthward on flat rafts, doubtless with a view of lending their aidin the capture and plunder of the Jane. The vessel still lay calmly atanchor in the bay, those on board being apparently quite unconscious ofany danger awaiting them. How we longed at that moment to be with them!either to aid in effecting their escape, or to perish with them inattempting a defence. We saw no chance even of warning them of theirdanger without bringing immediate destruction upon our own heads, withbut a remote hope of benefit to them. A pistol fired might suffice toapprise them that something wrong had occurred; but the report could notpossibly inform them that their only prospect of safety lay in gettingout of the harbour forthwith--it could not tell them that no principlesof honour now bound them to remain, that their companions were no longeramong the living. Upon hearing the discharge they could not be morethoroughly prepared to meet the foe, who were now getting ready toattack, than they already were, and always had been. No good, therefore,and infinite harm, would result from our firing, and after maturedeliberation, we forbore.

Our next thought was to attempt to rush toward the vessel, to seize oneof the four canoes which lay at the head of the bay, and endeavour toforce a passage on board. But the utter impossibility of succeeding inthis desperate task soon became evident. The country, as I said before,was literally swarming with the natives, skulking among the bushes andrecesses of the hills, so as not to be observed from the schooner. Inour immediate vicinity especially, and blockading the sole path by whichwe could hope to attain the shore at the proper point were stationed thewhole party of the black skin warriors, with Too-wit at their head, andapparently only waiting for some re-enforcement to commence his onsetupon the Jane. The canoes, too, which lay at the head of the bay, weremanned with savages, unarmed, it is true, but who undoubtedly had armswithin reach. We were forced, therefore, however unwillingly, to remainin our place of concealment, mere spectators of the conflict whichpresently ensued.

In about half an hour we saw some sixty or seventy rafts, or flatboats,without riggers, filled with savages, and coming round the southernbight of the harbor. They appeared to have no arms except short clubs,and stones which lay in the bottom of the rafts. Immediately afterwardanother detachment, still larger, appeared in an opposite direction, andwith similar weapons. The four canoes, too, were now quickly filled withnatives, starting up from the bushes at the head of the bay, and put offswiftly to join the other parties. Thus, in less time than I have takento tell it, and as if by magic, the Jane saw herself surrounded by animmense multitude of desperadoes evidently bent upon capturing her atall hazards.

That they would succeed in so doing could not be doubted for an instant.The six men left in the vessel, however resolutely they might engagein her defence, were altogether unequal to the proper management of theguns, or in any manner to sustain a contest at such odds. I couldhardly imagine that they would make resistance at all, but in this wasdeceived; for presently I saw them get springs upon the cable, and bringthe vessel’s starboard broadside to bear upon the canoes, which by thistime were within pistol range, the rafts being nearly a quarter of amile to windward. Owing to some cause unknown, but most probably tothe agitation of our poor friends at seeing themselves in so hopeless asituation, the discharge was an entire failure. Not a canoe was hit ora single savage injured, the shots striking short and ricocheting overtheir heads. The only effect produced upon them was astonishment atthe unexpected report and smoke, which was so excessive that for somemoments I almost thought they would abandon their design entirely, andreturn to the shore. And this they would most likely have done had ourmen followed up their broadside by a discharge of small arms, in which,as the canoes were now so near at hand, they could not have failed indoing some execution, sufficient, at least, to deter this party from afarther advance, until they could have given the rafts also a broadside.But, in place of this, they left the canoe party to recover from theirpanic, and, by looking about them, to see that no injury had beensustained, while they flew to the larboard to get ready for the rafts.

The discharge to larboard produced the most terrible effect. The starand double-headed shot of the large guns cut seven or eight of the raftscompletely asunder, and killed, perhaps, thirty or forty of the savagesoutright, while a hundred of them, at least, were thrown into the water,the most of them dreadfully wounded. The remainder, frightened out oftheir senses, commenced at once a precipitate retreat, not even waitingto pick up their maimed companions, who were swimming about in everydirection, screaming and yelling for aid. This great success, however,came too late for the salvation of our devoted people. The canoe partywere already on board the schooner to the number of more than a hundredand fifty, the most of them having succeeded in scrambling up the chainsand over the boarding-netting even before the matches had been appliedto the larboard guns. Nothing now could withstand their brute rage.Our men were borne down at once, overwhelmed, trodden under foot, andabsolutely torn to pieces in an instant.

Seeing this, the savages on the rafts got the better of their fears,and came up in shoals to the plunder. In five minutes the Jane was apitiable scene indeed of havoc and tumultuous outrage. The decks weresplit open and ripped up; the cordage, sails, and everything movable ondeck demolished as if by magic, while, by dint of pushing at the stern,towing with the canoes, and hauling at the sides, as they swam inthousands around the vessel, the wretches finally forced her on shore(the cable having been slipped), and delivered her over to the goodoffices of Too-wit, who, during the whole of the engagement,had maintained, like a skilful general, his post of security andreconnaissance among the hills, but, now that the victory was completedto his satisfaction, condescended to scamper down with his warriors ofthe black skin, and become a partaker in the spoils.

Too-wit’s descent left us at liberty to quit our hiding place andreconnoitre the hill in the vicinity of the chasm. At about fifty yardsfrom the mouth of it we saw a small spring of water, at which we slakedthe burning thirst that now consumed us. Not far from the spring wediscovered several of the filbert-bushes which I mentioned before. Upontasting the nuts we found them palatable, and very nearly resemblingin flavour the common English filbert. We collected our hats fullimmediately, deposited them within the ravine, and returned for more.While we were busily employed in gathering these, a rustling in thebushes alarmed us, and we were upon the point of stealing back to ourcovert, when a large black bird of the bittern species strugglingly andslowly arose above the shrubs. I was so much startled that I could donothing, but Peters had sufficient presence of mind to run up to itbefore it could make its escape, and seize it by the neck. Its strugglesand screams were tremendous, and we had thoughts of letting it go, lestthe noise should alarm some of the savages who might be still lurking inthe neighbourhood. A stab with a bowie knife, however, at length broughtit to the ground, and we dragged it into the ravine, congratulatingourselves that, at all events, we had thus obtained a supply of foodenough to last us for a week.

We now went out again to look about us, and ventured a considerabledistance down the southern declivity of the hill, but met with nothingelse which could serve us for food. We therefore collected a quantity ofdry wood and returned, seeing one or two large parties of the natives ontheir way to the village, laden with the plunder of the vessel, and who,we were apprehensive, might discover us in passing beneath the hill.

Our next care was to render our place of concealment as secure aspossible, and with this object, we arranged some brushwood over theaperture which I have before spoken of as the one through which we sawthe patch of blue sky, on reaching the platform from the interior of thechasm. We left only a very small opening just wide enough to admit ofour seeing the bay, without the risk of being discovered from below.Having done this, we congratulated ourselves upon the security of theposition; for we were now completely excluded from observation, as longas we chose to remain within the ravine itself, and not venture out uponthe hill, We could perceive no traces of the savages having ever beenwithin this hollow; but, indeed, when we came to reflect upon theprobability that the fissure through which we attained it had been onlyjust now created by the fall of the cliff opposite, and that no otherway of attaining it could be perceived, we were not so much rejoicedat the thought of being secure from molestation as fearful lest thereshould be absolutely no means left us for descent. We resolved toexplore the summit of the hill thoroughly, when a good opportunityshould offer. In the meantime we watched the motions of the savagesthrough our loophole.

They had already made a complete wreck of the vessel, and were nowpreparing to set her on fire. In a little while we saw the smokeascending in huge volumes from her main hatchway, and, shortlyafterward, a dense mass of flame burst up from the forecastle. Therigging, masts and what remained of the sails caught immediately, andthe fire spread rapidly along the decks. Still a great many of thesavages retained their stations about her, hammering with large stones,axes, and cannon balls at the bolts and other iron and copper work. Onthe beach, and in canoes and rafts, there were not less, altogether,in the immediate vicinity of the schooner, than ten thousand natives,besides the shoals of them who, laden with booty, were making theirway inland and over to the neighbouring islands. We now anticipated acatastrophe, and were not disappointed. First of all there came a smartshock (which we felt as distinctly where we were as if we had beenslightly galvanized), but unattended with any visible signs of anexplosion. The savages were evidently startled, and paused for aninstant from their labours and yellings. They were upon the point ofrecommencing, when suddenly a mass of smoke puffed up from the decks,resembling a black and heavy thundercloud--then, as if from its bowels,arose a tall stream of vivid fire to the height, apparently, of aquarter of a mile--then there came a sudden circular expansion of theflame--then the whole atmosphere was magically crowded, in a singleinstant, with a wild chaos of wood, and metal, and human limbs--and,lastly, came the concussion in its fullest fury, which hurled usimpetuously from our feet, while the hills echoed and re-echoed thetumult, and a dense shower of the minutest fragments of the ruinstumbled headlong in every direction around us.

The havoc among the savages far exceeded our utmost expectation, andthey had now, indeed, reaped the full and perfect fruits of theirtreachery. Perhaps a thousand perished by the explosion, while at leastan equal number were desperately mangled. The whole surface of the baywas literally strewn with the struggling and drowning wretches, andon shore matters were even worse. They seemed utterly appalled by thesuddenness and completeness of their discomfiture, and made no effortsat assisting one another. At length we observed a total change in theirdemeanour. From absolute stupor, they appeared to be, all at once,aroused to the highest pitch of excitement, and rushed wildly about,going to and from a certain point on the beach, with the strangestexpressions of mingled horror, rage, and intense curiosity depictedon their countenances, and shouting, at the top of their voices,“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”

Presently we saw a large body go off into the hills, whence theyreturned in a short time, carrying stakes of wood. These they brought tothe station where the crowd was the thickest, which now separated so asto afford us a view of the object of all this excitement. We perceivedsomething white lying upon the ground, but could not immediately makeout what it was. At length we saw that it was the carcass of the strangeanimal with the scarlet teeth and claws which the schooner had pickedup at sea on the eighteenth of January. Captain Guy had had the bodypreserved for the purpose of stuffing the skin and taking it to England.I remember he had given some directions about it just before our makingthe island, and it had been brought into the cabin and stowed away inone of the lockers. It had now been thrown on shore by the explosion;but why it had occasioned so much concern among the savages was morethan we could comprehend. Although they crowded around the carcass ata little distance, none of them seemed willing to approach it closely.By-and-by the men with the stakes drove them in a circle around it, andno sooner was this arrangement completed, than the whole of the vastassemblage rushed into the interior of the island, with loud screams of“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”