I called Captain Oudouse’s attention to it, only to be informed that he had watched it going down for several hours.  There was little to do, but that little he did very well, considering the circumstances.  He took off the light sails, shortened right down to storm canvas, spread life-lines, and waited for the wind.  His mistake lay in what he did after the wind came.  He hove to on the port tack, which was the right thing to do south of the Equator, if—­and there was the rub—­if one were not in the direct path of the hurricane.

We were in the direct path.  I could see that by the steady increase of the wind and the equally steady fall of the barometer.  I wanted him to turn and run with the wind on the port quarter until the barometer ceased falling, and then to heave to.  We argued till he was reduced to hysteria, but budge he would not.  The worst of it was that I could not get the rest of the pearl-buyers to back me up.  Who was I, anyway, to know more about the sea and its ways than a properly qualified captain? was what was in their minds, I knew.

Of course the sea rose with the wind frightfully; and I shall never forget the first three seas the Petite Jeanne shipped.  She had fallen off, as vessels do at times when hove to, and the first sea made a clean breach.  The life-lines were only for the strong and well, and little good were they even for them when the women and children, the bananas and cocoanuts, the pigs and trade boxes, the sick and the dying, were swept along in a solid, screeching, groaning mass.

The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne’s decks flush with the rails; and, as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all the miserable dunnage of life and luggage poured aft.  It was a human torrent.  They came head-first, feet-first, sidewise, rolling over and over, twisting, squirming, writhing, and crumpling up.  Now and again one caught a grip on a stanchion or a rope; but the weight of the bodies behind tore such grips loose.

One man I noticed fetch up, head on and square on, with the starboard-bitt.  His head cracked like an egg.  I saw what was coming, sprang on top of the cabin, and from there into the mainsail itself.  Ah Choon and one of the Americans tried to follow me, but I was one jump ahead of them.  The American was swept away and over the stern like a piece of chaff.  Ah Choon caught a spoke of the wheel, and swung in behind it.  But a strapping Raratonga vahine (woman)—­she must have weighed two hundred and fifty—­brought up against him, and got an arm around his neck.  He clutched the kanaka steersman with his other hand; and just at that moment the schooner flung down to starboard.

The rush of bodies and sea that was coming along the port runway between the cabin and the rail turned abruptly and poured to starboard.  Away they went—­vahine, Ah Choon, and steersman:  and I swear I saw Ah Choon grin at me with philosophic resignation as he cleared the rail and went under.