Tooraloo and I now hurried ashore in the boat, without well knowing what to do, and ran to the ridge, to see, if possible, what became of Lennox. The boat wherein he was, sheered for a moment alongside the schooner, the Mosca, apparently giving orders, and then pulled directly for the Midge, where the people got out, dragging poor Lennox along with them. "Heaven have mercy on us!" I exclaimed, shuddering. "What can they be going to do with the poor fellow?" I was not long in doubt; for the moment they got on the deck, the barbarians cast him headlong down the main hatchway, which was immediately battened down, and then hoisted in the boat. The crew of the schooner below me, whose deck, as already described, was hid by the high bank, were now busy, I could hear, in clearing for action; and several of them were piling up large stones, and making fast hawsers from her mastheads to trees at the top of the cliff near where I stood, that, in the event of her being carried below, it should be impossible to tow her out,--while the stones would prove formidable missiles when launched from above. I also perceived a boat at the foam-fringed sandy spit opposite the cocoa-nut trees, that formed one side of the narrow entrance, whose crew were filling bags with sand, and forming a small battery, with embrasures, for two carronades, that had been already landed, and lay like two black seeds on the white beach. The Spider had by this time tacked, and stood out to sea again, apparently astonished at the extent of the preparations to receive her. After a brief space, she hove about, and in the very middle and thickest of a squall, accompanied by heavy thunder and vivid lightning, dashed gallantly into the harbour; but just as she came abreast of the battery, she took the ground--she had tailed on the bank, and hung. Her masts in a moment flew forward, and bent as if they would have gone over the bows, the rigging and canvass shaking and flapping convulsively; but the sound spars instantly recovered their upright position, with a violent jerk that made every thing rattle again, like the recoil of two tough yew staves when the bowstrings snap. "Now, Master Henry, you are in for it," thought I.