Lizzie shot ahead, and the other boat fell
astern. Lizzie's father, composing himself into the easy attitude of one who had asserted the high moralities and taken an unassailable position, slowly lighted a pipe, and smoked, and took a survey of what he had in tow.
The salmon boat got out its oars and soon left us far astern. Some of the Chinese stood in the forward part of the cockpit, near the cabin doors, and once, as I leaned over the cockpit rail to flatten down the jib-sheet a bit, I felt some one brush against my hip pocket.
I could see him casting longing glances at the small skiff towing astern, so in the next calm I hauled the skiff alongside.
He came to rest, his golden muzzle soft-enfolded to the eyes, and was very still, all forgetful of the Ariel showing her copper to the sun under the press of the wind, all forgetful of Michael growing small in the distance as the whaleboat grew small
astern. No less still was Villa.
The sea was calm except for the white water at our bows and the two long radiating swells running far off into the distance upon either hand
astern, forming a great V which our propellers filled with choppy waves.
A great battleship, forging silent and unlighted through the dark night, loomed close
astern.
In fact, the dead men in the canoe we had left
astern after the battle and the survivors who were paddling rapidly toward their shore were the first he ever had seen.
There lay my skiff
astern. The last of a strong ebb was running out in channel in the teeth of an ocean breeze of forty miles an hour.
But few instants were required, when, abruptly shifting the double horizontal rudders forward and astern, he shot upward on the tense and straining plane and out of the pit.
Nevertheless, the monoplane was tossed fully three hundred feet before the danger was left astern.
'But given the fact that it was hit in the
astern, it was as if it (Chinese vessel) was trying to avoid.
"Which could mean that the Chinese only saw the FB (Filipino fishing boat) when it was near and tried to do a hard left or hard right with its engines on full
astern, thus the damage is minimal," the message read.