er the starboard side, still attached to the hull
by the rigging, while every scrap of bulwark, boats, galley, in fact
everything above the level of the deck, was swept away.

A single glance sufficed me to grasp these details, and then I turned my
gaze inboard again, wondering whether any of the others had survived
that awful passage across the reef. And as I did so the sound of
someone vomiting close at hand reached my ears.

"Who is that?" I demanded, looking in the direction from which the
sound proceeded, and as I spoke a figure uphove itself from among the
raffle of the port main rigging, which lay athwart the deck, and a voice
which I recognised as Cunningham's responded.

"That you, Temple?" it asked. "Ugh! Ouch! Ow! By the Piper, this is
awful! I seem to have swallowed half the Pacific Ocean! Ow! Ugh! I--
Aw! I say, old chap--auch!--where the dickens are we, and what has
happened, eh?"

"Where we are I'll be hanged if I know," I responded, "for all about
here should be open water, according to the chart. But it isn't, for
we've just beaten over a reef and in all probability smashed the bottom
of the poor little hooker to matchwood in the process. And now the best
we can hope is that there is land of some sort close under our lee, for
if there isn't we are in a very pretty pickle. Have you seen anything
of the others?"

"Yes," answered Cunningham, "Murdock is here; but I'm afraid he is badly
hurt, poor chap, if not killed outright. When the schooner struck, he
and I were swept for'ard by the first sea that broke aboard, and the
next thing I knew, when the water had gone, was that I was clinging to
this rigging here with one hand, and that I had hold of somebody's leg
with the other, that somebody being Murdock. But he was--and still is--
insensible, and I am afraid he must have been violently dashed against
some of the wreckage, so I lost no time in making him fast to the first
loose rope's end I could find. But I say, if the schooner's bottom is
stove, as you say, I suppose she'll sink in a few minutes, won't she?"

"Sink! With her hold full of sandalwood? Not much!" I retorted.
"Still, I hope there is land not far away, for I have no fancy for
washing about the Pacific on a crazy, waterlogged hulk, and that is the
condition of the _Martha Brown_ at this moment. But where are Chips and
Sails and the boy? I'm afraid we shall never again set eyes upon poor
cooky, for he was in the gall