t you call
harriken. Other day, all quite easy plan--but this day not so, great
water, all white--no go, no man."

It was queer talk, and we might have laughed at him if we'd have
forgotten that he saved our lives last night and was waiting to save
them again this morning. But you don't laugh at a friend, talk as he
may, and for that matter we were all too excited to think of any such
thing, and we made haste to scramble up out of the pit and to follow
him to the heights where the truth should be known--the best of it or
the worst. For the path or its dangerous places we cared nothing now.
The rocks, upstanding all about us, shut in the view as some great
basin cut in the mountain's heart. You could see the black sky above
and the bottomless chasms below--but of the water nothing. Imagine,
then, how we raced for the summit: now up on our feet, now on all-fours
like dogs; now calling, man to man, to hasten; now saying that haste
wouldn't help us. And no wonder--no wonder our hearts beat high and our
hands were unsteady, for beyond the basin we should find the sea, and
the view might show us life or death.

Old Clair-de-Lune was the first to be up, but I was close upon his
heels, and Dolly Venn not far behind me. Who spoke the first word I
don't rightly recollect; but I hadn't been on the heights more than ten
seconds when I knew why it was spoken, and what the true meaning of it
might be.

The ship was gone!

All the eyes in the wide world could not have found her on that angry
sea below us, or anywhere on the black and looming horizon beyond. The
night had taken her. The ship was gone. Hope as we might, speak up as
we might, tell each other this story or tell each other that--the one
sure fact remained that the Southern Cross had steamed away from Ken's
Island and left us to our fates.

"He'll be running for sea-room, and come in when the gale falls," said
Peter Bligh, when we had stood all together a little while, as
crestfallen a lot as the Pacific Ocean could show that day; "trust
Mister Jacob to be cautious--he's a Scotchman, and would think first of
the ship. A precious lot of good his wages would do him if the ship
were down in sixty fathoms and he inside her!"

"That's true," cried Dolly Venn, "though your poor old father didn't
say it, Mister Bligh. The ship's gone, but she'll come back again." And
then to me he said, very earnestly, "Oh, she must come back, captain."

"Aye, lad," said I, "let her ride