companion, the sky had
brightened to such an extent that the stars had all vanished, and
presently, with a flash of golden radiance, up rose the sun; his
cheering beams at once transforming the scene from one of chill
dreariness to a blaze of genial warmth and beauty.

Leslie felt that, with the reappearance of the sun, it would be well to
get his companion out of the water and up on the top of the hencoops as
soon as possible, since dryness and warmth were what she now most
urgently required; he accordingly at once went to work with a will to
get his proposed raft into shape.

But, first of all, he made it his business to investigate the interiors
of the coops, with an eye to the provision of a certain want in the not
far distant future. He felt sure that in one, if not both, of the coops
would be found a number of drowned fowls; and although the hunger of
himself and his companion had not yet nearly reached the point of
demanding satisfaction on a diet of raw, drowned poultry, he foresaw the
speedy approach of a moment when even such unappetising fare as this
would be welcome. He accordingly turned the coops over so that he could
get at their contents; and found, as he had expected, that each
contained a fair supply of food. Indeed there was more than they would
be able to consume before it became unusable, one coop yielding fourteen
fowls, and the other eight. These he abstracted and secured; then he
turned the two coops over in the water so that they floated right side
upward, and face to face--in order that their tops should afford
something in the nature of a smooth platform upon which the pair could
recline with the minimum of discomfort--and in that position he firmly
lashed the two together with the lashings still attached to them. Then
he helped Miss Trevor to get out of her life-buoy and clamber up on the
top of the fragile structure; finding, to his satisfaction, when he had
done so, that the raft possessed just enough buoyancy to support her
comfortably, when reclining at full length upon it, although,
unfortunately, not enough to keep her dry, since even in such quiet
weather as then prevailed, the sea continuously washed over it.

It occurred to Leslie that, since the hencoops had broken adrift from
the sinking ship, other wreckage might have done the same; and he
accordingly proceeded to search the surface of the ocean with his gaze,
in quest of floating objects. For a few minutes his quest was v