sts which were the headquarters of their
lives; two more chests with handbags, oilskins, and blankets supplied
the others; Hadden, amid general applause, added the last case of the
brown sherry; the captain brought the log, instruments, and chronometer;
nor did Hemstead forget the banjo or a pinned handkerchief of Butaritari
shells.

It was about three P.M. when they pushed off, and (the wind being still
westerly) fell to the oars. "Well, we've got the guts out of YOU!" was
the captain's nodded farewell to the hulk of the Currency Lass, which
presently shrank and faded in the sea. A little after a calm succeeded,
with much rain; and the first meal was eaten, and the watch below lay
down to their uneasy slumber on the bilge under a roaring shower-bath.
The twenty-ninth dawned overhead from out of ragged clouds; there is
no moment when a boat at sea appears so trenchantly black and so
conspicuously little; and the crew looked about them at the sky and
water with a thrill of loneliness and fear. With sunrise the trade set
in, lusty and true to the point; sail was made; the boat flew; and by
about four in the afternoon, they were well up with the closed part of
the reef, and the captain standing on the thwart, and holding by the
mast, was studying the island through the binoculars.

"Well, and where's your station?" cried Mac.

"I don't someway pick it up," replied the captain.

"No, nor never will!" retorted Mac, with a clang of despair and triumph
in his tones.

The truth was soon plain to all. No buoys, no beacons, no lights, no
coal, no station; the castaways pulled through a lagoon and landed on
an isle, where was no mark of man but wreckwood, and no sound but of the
sea. For the seafowl that harboured and lived there at the epoch of my
visit were then scattered into the uttermost parts of the ocean, and
had left no traces of their sojourn besides dropped feathers and addled
eggs. It was to this they had been sent, for this they had stooped all
night over the dripping oars, hourly moving further from relief. The
boat, for as small as it was, was yet eloquent of the hands of men, a
thing alone indeed upon the sea but yet in itself all human; and the
isle, for which they had exchanged it, was ingloriously savage, a place
of distress, solitude, and hunger unrelieved. There was a strong glare
and shadow of the evening over all; in which they sat or lay, not
speaking, careless even to eat, men swindled out of life and