way the
skirts of her dress. Yet Dorothy felt a sort of joyous excitement in
defying the storm, and while she held fast to the railing she peered
around through the gloom and thought she saw the dim form of a man
clinging to a mast not far away from her. This might be her uncle, so
she called as loudly as she could:

"Uncle Henry! Uncle Henry!"

But the wind screeched and howled so madly that she scarce heard her
own voice, and the man certainly failed to hear her, for he did not
move.

Dorothy decided she must go to him; so she made a dash forward, during
a lull in the storm, to where a big square chicken-coop had been lashed
to the deck with ropes. She reached this place in safety, but no
sooner had she seized fast hold of the slats of the big box in which
the chickens were kept than the wind, as if enraged because the little
girl dared to resist its power, suddenly redoubled its fury. With a
scream like that of an angry giant it tore away the ropes that held the
coop and lifted it high into the air, with Dorothy still clinging to
the slats. Around and over it whirled, this way and that, and a few
moments later the chicken-coop dropped far away into the sea, where the
big waves caught it and slid it up-hill to a foaming crest and then
down-hill into a deep valley, as if it were nothing more than a
plaything to keep them amused.

Dorothy had a good ducking, you may be sure, but she didn't lose her
presence of mind even for a second. She kept tight hold of the stout
slats and as soon as she could get the water out of her eyes she saw
that the wind had ripped the cover from the coop, and the poor chickens
were fluttering away in every direction, being blown by the wind until
they looked like feather dusters without handles. The bottom of the
coop was made of thick boards, so Dorothy found she was clinging to a
sort of raft, with sides of slats, which readily bore up her weight.
After coughing the water out of her throat and getting her breath
again, she managed to climb over the slats and stand upon the firm
wooden bottom of the coop, which supported her easily enough.

"Why, I've got a ship of my own!" she thought, more amused than
frightened at her sudden change of condition; and then, as the coop
climbed up to the top of a big wave, she looked eagerly around for the
ship from which she had been blown.

It was far, far away, by this time. Perhaps no one on board had yet
missed her, or knew of her stran