Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-05-30

denly through tne aim dusk-a speck OF
light to the starboard! 1t was the light Of a
fire in some native village.
In a second, Thorold Ashby realized to
the full in what jeopardy they all stood. A
reef must be close ahead. The yacht was in
danger
As he looked, the speck of light disap-
peared-reappeared - and once more dis
appeared again. With thrill of sudden
horror, he knew just what that meant
Breakers on their lee! Not 20 yards off!
When she rose on the crest, light shone
from the island When she sank in the
trough again, the Light was obscured by the
vast wall of surf He saw 1t now, rising
sheer, like a white cliff of spray, before
them. She was making straight for it
under full steam. One moment more, and
she would ground and be swamped by it.
"Hard a-port 20 But the sharp command
rang Just a second too late. As it broke
short from the owners lips a thrill crashed
Earring through the Lika-Lika's hull from
stem to stern. Her keel grated on the low
barrier of coral rock underneath. The
breakers sprang upon her like wild beast
upon its prev. With horrible rapidity she
snapped in two amidships. There was a cry
of terror: a wild sense Of darkness and of
rushing water; then they were battling, each
for his own neck, with huge billOwS that
flung them resistlesslv landward They were
pounded like pebbles on the loose beach of
white sand. AT that point they lost con-
sciousness. The Lika-Lika broke up into
shattered planks and fragments.
IL
When morning broke, calm and clear
after the storm, three survivors of the wreck
found themselves lying, half dead, on the
bare ground outside a wattled Kanaka hut
in the Manihiki Islands. A crowd of
friendly natives pressed eagerly around.
The Manihiki people have never been very
bad cannibals; and the wreckage of the Lika-
Lil1a had brought them 50 much good luck
that they felt Hospitality disposed toward
the three shipwrecked mariners.
Thcrold Ashby himself the owner of the
lost Yacht, Law, most seriously wounded of
all. stretched out at full length on a strip of
native mating. Two Kanaka women, with
bare brown arms and red flowers in their
hair, held up his fainting head He turned
wearily to his companions, both sailors of
the crew. They were all that remained
alive On the beach hard by, mangled
corpse or two, half naked, and pum-
Inelled out of all recognition on the
jagged peaks of submerged coral, lay
WnlIe ana SndStlNs DdtnuESI, he Sdlu
feeblv TO the nearest of his two men, 81
don't want to live now. I'm too battered
and Knocked about to care much for living.
Since my wife died at Leyuka, 1 haven't
loved my life. And l can't bear TO look at
those poor bodies lying unburied on the
shore. l feel as if it were my fault all this
should have come upon you ten good fel-
lows-for l brought you here for my own
amusement, But there's one thing I'd give
a thousand pounds to do before die-sign
that will had made for meat Samoa. You and
Howe could witness it; you're alive enough
for that. have il in my pocket here; it's
wet, but not spoilt. All we want now is just
q pen and ink But where are we to get
those on a kanaka island?"
How strangely things come about in this
world, 10 be sure. Thorold Ashby was a
wealthy man, the son of a Liverpool ship
owner deceased, who had died in the odor
of sanctiJy and insufficient drainage at a
Naples hotel, and whose personality had
been sworn at more than $500 900. For 20
years Thorold Ashby had been engaged in
the honest rndeavOr to spend as much as
possible of the wealth bequeathed him; and,
having inherited some of his fathers ship
owning tastes he had got rid of a good deal
OF ii on the Lika-Lika, his Clyde-built
steam Yacht. christened after a charming
Hawaiian princess he had met at Honolulu,
on a former voyage. This last cruise. how
eve, had been in many ways most dis
astrous one. His wife. whom he loved
uenderlv, and for the sake of whose health he
had come so long a trip in the remote South
Seas, mad been taken i'll and died in the
harbor at Fiji. On his way back to San
Francisco, en- route for England. Ashby had
called at Samoa, where an English lawyer
(there are English lawyers everywhere now)
drew up will for him, to secure the only
object that was left very near his heart.
His wife had niece, Nesta Clyde by name
who had lived with them long in London,
and whom they had learned to treat pretty
much like daughter. But unless he made
a Will in Nesta's favor, everything would
now 90 TO his two brothers, who were al
ready too rich-having stuck to ships-and
who had treated him very i'll over that nasty
little business of the Liverpool house
property.
So he had the will made at Samoa-at-
tcstation clause and all-and then, like the
rest of us, thrust it in his pocket unsigned,
meaning to execute it in due form at his
leisure at San Francisco.
And now, as he lay dying on the coral
beach ofa Manihiki atoll, with no more chance
of getting at pen and ink than if he had been
alone in 1000 miles of unpeopled ocean,
oh, how bitterly he regretted his procrastin-
alton 1t was hard to realize, indeed, the
immensity of the change. Last night he
had been surrounded by every European
comfort and luxury in the cabin of tie Lika-
Lika; this morning he sat among a group of
half-naked Kanakas, removed at one blow,
as it were, from the electric light of the
nineteenth century to a pervading atmos-
phere of prehistoric saYagery.
He took the damp paper from his pocket,
opened it, and looked at it family. ''All
my lands, estates, houses messuages, tene-
ments, stocks, shares, and other property
whatsoever that l die possessed OF, to my
wife's niece, Nesta Clyde, gentlewomar, ab-
solutely, and for her own sole use and bene-
tit. He drew deep sigh. That was good,
as far as it went. But he would never be
able now to sign it; and, even if he did,
what chance of its ever reaching England at
all? Bathurst and Howe were almost as
battered and as MANNED as he himself was;
and, if they both died there, what would be-
come of a viii among all those naked Kama
kas? They would enshrine it in hut,
most likely, and worship it as a fetish.
And if it didn't turn up, his brothers
Percy and Archibald would never allow
poor Nesta one penny. He knew those men
deeply he reproached himself now for not
having signed the will at Samoa, and sent it
home by post 1t was a duty he owed to
Nesta, and he had grossly neglected it.
eff only l had pen and ink p the dying
impOtent remorse; 81 could sign it even
now, and YOU and Howe could witness it. %
'EMr. Watts had stylograph he used to
carry in his pocket, sir, " the sailor answered,
half dying, yet in the common-sense sailor
fashion EeTut his bodvsS nOt nona oebora