Meanwhile, the others had been steadily increasing our cargo, until, feeling that we had quite as much fish as would suffice us, besides being really a good load, I suggested a move towards the ship. We were laying within about half a mile of the shore, where the extremity of the level land reached the cliffs. Up one of the well-worn tracks a fine, fat goat was slowly creeping, stopping every now and then to browse upon the short herbage that clung to the crevices of the rock. Without saying a word, Polly the Kanaka slipped over the side, and struck out with swift overhead strokes for the foot of the cliff. As soon as I saw what, he was after, I shouted loudly for him to return, but he either could not or would not hear me. The fellow’s seal-like ability as a swimmer was, of course, well known to me, but I must confess I trembled for his life in such a weltering whirl of rock-torn sea as boiled among the crags at the base of that precipice. He, however, evidently knew what he was going to do, and, though taking risks which would have certainly been fatal to an ordinary swimmer, was quite unafraid of the result.
We all watched him breathlessly as he apparently headed straight for the biggest outlying rock—a square, black boulder about the size of an ordinary railway car. He came up to it on the summit of a foaming wave; but just as I looked for him to be dashed to pieces against its adamantine sides, he threw his legs into the air and disappeared. A stealthy, satisfied smile glowed upon Samuela’s rugged visage, and, as he caught my eye, he said jauntily, “Polly savee too much. Lookee him come on top one time!” I looked, and sure enough there was the daring villain crawling up among the kelp far out of reach of the hungry rollers. It was a marvellous exhibition of coolness and skill.