s fast as they are gathered. There is nothing left
for them, then, but to wend their way back homewards as best they can
and await the dawn of day.

The dawn that morning was long in coming, and when at length the grey
murky light slowly forced its way through the overhanging canopy of rent
and tattered cloud which obscured the heavens, wreck and destruction
everywhere became visible. Fay Island, it is true, had escaped almost
unscathed, doubtless owing to its sheltered situation; but on the main--
as the party had got into the way of designating the larger island--
thousands of trees were lying prostrate, many of them uprooted, and the
rest snapped off close to the ground.

As soon as it was light enough to see anything, Gaunt, with Henderson
this time for a companion, once more made his way down to the creek, but
there was nothing to be seen from there. Even the buoy attached to the
raft's moorings was invisible; but just where it ought to be there was a
strong ripple on the roughened surface of the water which seemed to
suggest that the buoy, and possibly the swamped punt as well, was still
there, but dragged under water by the strength of the current.

It continued to blow very heavily--though not with the same awfully
destructive violence which marked the first burst of the hurricane--all
that day and part of the ensuing night, when the gale broke, and by
sunrise the wind had dropped to a strong breeze. Then once more did the
four men set out from the fort in the, by that time, almost hopeless
effort to obtain some clue to the fate of poor Captain Blyth.

Descending the outer ladder--which had been discovered on the previous
day at some distance from the fort--the search party first made for the
creek, from the shore of which--the stream having by this time subsided
and its current sunk to its normal speed--they descried not only the
buoy marking the moorings of the raft, but also, as they had quite
expected, the swamped punt hanging to it. The latter was promptly
secured; Manners swimming out to it with the end of a line from the
shore, by means of which the craft was drawn in and grounded upon the
beach and baled out. The oars having been washed out of her and swept
away, the next thing to be done was to work up a new pair; a task which
was soon accomplished, since they now had an abundant store of suitable
material close at hand in the ship-yard. This done, the searchers made
their way down stream and