ty souls in all--found a watery grave in the dark
cavern of that unknown land.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER 7.

So rapidly did the final catastrophe take place that it was difficult
for the rescued party at first to credit the evidence of their senses.
On the spot where the _Lapwing_ had been beating her sides against the
cruel walls of the cavern, and where so many hearts had been throbbing
wildly between hope and fear, no living creature remained; nothing but a
few feet of the shattered masts appearing now and then above the surging
waves, was left to tell of the terrible tragedy that had been enacted
there.

For upwards of an hour the party in the boat hovered about the place,
not so much with the hope of rescuing any of their shipmates as on
account of the difficulty of tearing themselves away from the fatal
spot. Perhaps the natural tendency of man to hope against hope had
something to do with it. Then they passed silently out of the cavern
and rowed slowly along the base of the tremendous cliffs.

At length the feeling of self-preservation began to assert itself, and
Bob Massey was the first to break silence with the question--

"Does any one know if there's anything to eat aboard?"

"We'd better see to that," observed Dr Hayward, who was steering.

Bob Massey pulled in his oar, and, without remark, began to search the
boat. It was found that all the food they had brought away consisted of
nine tins of preserved meat and three pieces of pork, a supply which
would not go far among ten persons.

The ten survivors were Dr Hayward and his wife; Massey and Nellie; Joe
Slag; John Mitford and his wife Peggy; Terrence O'Connor, the assistant
cook; Tomlin, one of the cabin passengers; and Ned Jarring. All the
rest, as we have said, had perished with the ill-fated _Lapwing_.

Little was said at first, for the hopelessness of their condition seemed
so obvious that the men shrank from expressing their gloomy fears to the
women who sat huddled together, wet and cold, in the bottom of the boat.

As we have said, as far as the eye could see in any direction, the
frowning cliffs rose perpendicularly out of deep water. There was not
even a strip of sand or a bay into which they could run in case of the
wind increasing.

"There is nothing for it but to push on till we come to an inlet, or
break of some sort in the cliffs, by which we may land," said Hayward,
speaking encouragingly to the women. "God helping us, we are