p off the rocks."

"And John is safe, you say?"

"Perfectly safe. But why are you not in bed, mother?"

"I couldn't sleep in such a tempest as this, when I knew my boys were on
the water."

"Well, go to bed now, then, for I must go on board again and clean my
fish."

"You shall do nothing of the kind! I will warrant you haven't had a wink
of sleep all night long."

"Yes; I slept two or three hours."

"Go right up-stairs, and go to bed, then. You will kill yourself,
working all night, and losing your sleep."

"But John is asleep in the cabin of the Fawn. Shall I leave him there?
Suppose the boat should go adrift?"

"Well, then, go down to the boat, and go to bed there. You needn't clean
your fish yet."

Paul decided to adopt this suggestion, and in a few moments he was
snoring with his brother in the little cabin of the boat.

It was six o'clock when the first officer of the Fawn began to show
signs of life, and it was fully quarter past six before he realized, in
the fullest sense, that he was still in the land of the living. An
unpleasant dream that the gallant craft had been dashed in pieces on
Rock Island reef, and that he, the before mentioned first officer of the
schooner Fawn, had been thrown upon the rocks, where an enormous green
lobster, about the size of a full-grown elephant, had seized him in one
of his huge claws, and borne him down among the rock weed and devil's
aprons for his breakfast, happily proved to be a mere fantasy of his
slumbering faculties.

John sat upon his berth and congratulated himself upon his escape from
the claw of the lobster. Then the occurrences of the night, the run off
the lee shore, and the white-capped billows that had growled so in the
gloom, began to come to his recollection, and he realized that they had
had a tough time of it. But it was all right now, for though the rain
pattered upon the deck above him, the boat did not pitch much. And there
was Paul fast asleep in the other berth; of course it was all right, or
he would not be there.

"But where are we?" thought John. "That's the next question. The last
thing I remember was, that we were driving like mad over the rough sea.
Then Paul told me to turn in; and I did, but I could hardly keep in my
berth, the boat rolled and pitched so. Of course Paul couldn't get up
while the wind blew so, and he must have anchored under some island. I
wonder where we are."

At last John came to the conclusion that he could