Here The Boat Was Turned Around And
Backed In; In Case Of Attack, The Boat Would Be Ready To Dash Away.
In All The Time I Was On Malaita I Never Saw A Boat Land Bow On.
In
fact, the recruiting vessels use two boats - one to go in on the
beach, armed, of course, and the other to lie off several hundred
feet and "cover" the first boat.
The Minota, however, being a small
vessel, did not carry a covering boat.
We were close in to the shore and working in closer, stern-first,
when a school of fish was sighted. The fuse was ignited and the
stick of dynamite thrown. With the explosion, the surface of the
water was broken by the flash of leaping fish. At the same instant
the woods broke into life. A score of naked savages, armed with
bows and arrows, spears, and Sniders, burst out upon the shore. At
the same moment our boat's crew, lifted their rifles. And thus the
opposing parties faced each other, while our extra boys dived over
after the stunned fish.
Three fruitless days were spent at Su'u. The Minota got no recruits
from the bush, and the bushmen got no heads from the Minota. In
fact, the only one who got anything was Wade, and his was a nice
dose of fever. We towed out with the whale-boat, and ran along the
coast to Langa Langa, a large village of salt-water people, built
with prodigious labour on a lagoon sand-bank - literally BUILT up, an
artificial island reared as a refuge from the blood-thirsty bushmen.
Here, also, on the shore side of the lagoon, was Binu, the place
where the Minota was captured half a year previously and her captain
killed by the bushmen.
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