oose from
its foundation, and was floating off with us. The breakers, streaked
with angry phosphorus, were fearful to look at.

The wind rose higher and higher, cutting long slits in the tent, through
which the rain poured incessantly. To complete the sum of our miseries,
the night was at hand. It came down suddenly, at last, like a curtain,
shutting in Sandpeep island from all the world.

It was a dirty night, as the sailors say. The darkness was something
that could be felt as well as seen--it pressed down upon one with a cold,
clammy touch. Gazing into the hollow blackness, all sorts of imaginable
shapes seemed to start forth from vacancy--brilliant colors, stars,
prisms, and dancing lights. What boy, lying awake at night, has not
amused or terrified himself by peopling the spaces around his bed with
these phenomena of his own eyes?

"I say," whispered Fred Langdon, at length, clutching my hand, "don't
you see things--out there--in the dark?"

"Yes, yes--Binny Wallace's face!"

I added to my own nervousness by making this avowal; though for the
last ten minutes I had seen little besides that star-pale face with
its angelic hair and brows. First a slim yellow circle, like the nimbus
round the moon, took shape and grew sharp against the darkness; then
this faded gradually, and there was the Face, wearing the same sad,
sweet look it wore when he waved his hand to us across the awful water.
This optical illusion kept repeating itself.

"And I too," said Adams. "I see it every now and then, outside there.
What wouldn't I give if it really was poor little Wallace looking in at
us! O boys, how shall we dare to go back to the town without him? I've
wished a hundred times, since we've been sitting here, that I was in his
place, alive or dead!"

We dreaded the approach of morning as much as we longed for it. The
morning would tell us all. Was it possible for the Dolphin to outride
such a storm? There was a light-house on Mackerel Reef, which lay
directly in the course the boat had taken, when it disappeared. If the
Dolphin had caught on this reef, perhaps Binny Wallace was safe. Perhaps
his cries had been heard by the keeper of the light. The man owned a
lifeboat, and had rescued several people. Who could tell?

Such were the questions we asked ourselves again and again, as we lay in
each other's arms waiting for daybreak. What an endless night it was! I
have known months that did not seem so long.

Our position was