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The Cruise of the Kawa by George S. (George Shepard) Chappell
page 53 of 101 (52%)
to the matted _haro_, we were free to watch a stupendous spectacle.
Triplett alone went aboard and lashed himself to the improvised steering
post. Our sail had been stretched and rigged with hundreds of yards
of _eva-eva_, in addition to which four large _taa-taas_ were lashed
along the scuppers.

In less time than it takes to tell, the wind had risen to
super-hurricane force. Suddenly Baa-haabaa let out a yell of warning
and pointed seaward. Rushing toward us at lightning speed was a wall
of white water, sixty feet high! In a trice we were all in the treetops,
my wife hauling me after her with praiseworthy devotion. All, did I
say? All but Triplett. He was sublime. Then for the first time I knew
that he was, in truth, our chief. Waving his free arm at the advancing
maelstrom, he yelled defiance. Then this towering seawall hit him
square in the stern.

I caught one fleeting glimpse of the Kawa gallantly riding the
foam. An instant later she was flung with a tremendous crash far down
the leafy lane. Fully half the distance she must have gone in that
first onslaught. The last eighth-of-a-mile she ground her way through
a torrent of sea and cocoanuts. The forest rang with the bellowing
wind, the snapping coral branches and the screams of the whistling-trout
fighting vainly against the current. What a plan was Triplett's! The
cocoanuts, being movable, rolled with the flood and actually acted as
ball bearings. Without them our craft must certainly have burst asunder.

The storm passed as quickly as it had come and by the time we had
clambered to the ground and rushed across the atoll there lay our tight
little darling, peacefully at anchor in the still waters of the lagoon,
with Triplett on her quarter-deck immersed in the New Bedford "Argus."
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