hings as
they absolutely required. A quantity of biscuit, tea, coffee, and sugar
were landed without receiving much damage, then a line was fastened to a
cask of salt beef, and this, with a few more provisions, was drawn
ashore the first day, and placed under the shelter of the largest rock
on the point. On the following day it was resolved that a raft should
be constructed, and everything that could in any way prove useful be
brought to the sandbank and secured. For Captain Dunning well knew that
another storm might arise as quickly as the former had done, and
although the ship at present lay in comparatively quiet water, the huge
billows that would be dashed against her in such circumstances would be
certain to break her up and scatter her cargo on the breast of the
all-devouring sea.

In the midst of all this activity and bustle there sat one useless and
silent, but exceedingly grave and uncommonly attentive spectator,
namely, Jacko the monkey. That sly and sagacious individual, seeing
that no one intended to look after him, had during the whole of the
recent storm wisely looked after himself. He had ensconced himself in a
snug and comparatively sheltered corner under the afterpart of the
weather-bulwarks. But when he saw the men one by one leaving the ship,
and proceeding to the shore by means of the rope, he began to evince an
anxiety as to his own fate which had in it something absolutely human.
Jacko was the last man, so to speak, to leave the _Red Eric_. Captain
Dunning, resolving, with the true spirit of a brave commander; to
reserve that honour to himself, had seen the last man, he thought, out
of the ship, and was two-thirds of the distance along the rope on his
way to land, when Jim Scroggles, who was _always_ either in or out of
the way at the most inopportune moments, came rushing up from below,
whither he had gone to secure a favourite brass _finger-ring_, and
scrambled over the side.

It would be difficult to say whether Jim's head, or feet, or legs, or
knees, or arms went over the side first,--they all got over somehow,
nobody knew how--and in the getting over his hat flew off and was lost
for ever.

Seeing this, and feeling, no doubt, the momentous truth of that
well-known adage "Now or never," Master Jacko uttered a shriek, bounded
from his position of fancied security, and seized Jim Scroggles firmly
by the hair, resolved apparently to live or perish along with him. As
to simply clamberin