‘Fasten a spare oar to the line,’ says the captain, pointing to the rope which descended to the wreck, ‘we may as well buoy the place.’ His directions were obeyed. ‘Now, pull for the schooner. Lash that man’s arms there with a bit of spun-yarn; he has brought it upon himself.’ And in a minute we were safe on board, and the dwarf, who made no resistance, was thrust well pinioned into the cabin. ‘We have no time to trifle,’ said the captain; and so we all thought, precious moments had been lost, without the symptoms of the weather having been attended to. ‘We were looking for the gold,’ said the captain. ‘And we were looking at you,’ replied the boatswain. In ten minutes the anchor was up, the boats hoisted in, the sails set double reefed, and the schooner beating to the southward against heavy puffs of wind and a great tumbling swell. Our object was to weather either of the branches or horns of the shoal, then we could either scud or lie to, having plenty of sea-room. What we feared was, that the force of the squalls would strike us before we got clear of the fork in which we were embayed. Meantime the sky was growing every moment of a more lurid colour, as though the arch of heaven had been a great vault of brazen metal, and the surf was breaking in awful surges upon the reefs. ‘Captain,’ says Bristol Tom, who was at the tiller, ‘we shall not weather the point; the wind heads her every moment.’ And as he spoke, the sails flapped like thunder, and a great swell lifted the schooner and flung her bodily back a dozen fathoms. One of the men from the forecastle cried at the same time that the wind was coming, for that the sea was breaking white about a league away. ‘We must run back through the shoal,’ says I. The captain paused a moment. ‘There is no other hope,’ quoth he. ‘Fetch the dwarf on deck;’ and immediately Bedloe made his appearance, and gazed anxiously at the weather. Captain Jem went below. ‘You offered to pilot us already,’ I said, ‘and you know the shoal well. I have seen your chart of it. You must bring us through now.’ Captain Jem at this moment returned on deck, carrying two large pistols. ‘If the schooner as much as scrapes a ridge of sand,’ says he, and he pressed the muzzle of one of the pistols so hard upon the dwarfs forehead, that when he took it away there was a round blue ring left above the eyebrow; ‘if the schooner as much as taps one oyster upon the coral, you cease to live!’ ‘That is no news,’ answered the dwarf, with the old shrug of the shoulders; ‘if the schooner strikes we all of us cease to live. Pooh, pooh, man! bullying avails not now. We are all of us more near being drowned than I am of being shot. Put up your pistols.’