ing a word to either of us he
suddenly flung up his hands and disappeared, at the precise moment when
the comber had us in its grip and was about to fling us up on the beach,
and when, consequently, it was most necessary that each of us should be
perfectly free to look after himself. Fortunately, however, we were all
swimming close together, and as Murdock disappeared, Cunningham and I
with one accord dived and made a grab at him, catching him just as the
breaker curled over and broke, hurling us all forward in a smothering
swirl of foam; and the next instant we were all being rolled over and
over upon the sand. Then, as we came to rest, I dug my toes and the
fingers of my disengaged hand deep into the sand, ready for the
backwash, while, as it afterward appeared, Cunningham did the same; and
after a severe struggle of a few seconds' duration the water receded,
leaving us stranded and gasping for breath, when Chips and Sails, who
had been on the watch, rushed down into the water, and, in obedience to
a gasped request from me, seized the boatswain's insensible body and
dragged it up out of reach of the next breaker, while Cunningham and I
scrambled to our feet and staggered after them.

Once ashore the boatswain soon recovered from his fainting fit, or
whatever it had been, whereupon we all seated ourselves in a circle upon
the sand and feasted upon bananas, afterwards slaking our thirst at a
little runnel of deliciously cool, sweet water that the carpenter had
discovered, earlier in the day, trickling out of the cliff at no great
distance from the point at which the wreck had come ashore. And while
we were eating, the carpenter informed us that he and the sailmaker had
been stretched out upon the schooner's cabin lockers, fast asleep, when
she struck upon the reef for the first time; and that, awakened by the
violence of the shock and the crash of the falling masts, they had
leaped to their feet, and, scarcely knowing what they did, rushed up on
deck, only to be swept overboard the next instant by a heavy sea which
broke over the ship. Neither of them knew, at the moment, what had
befallen the other; but from what they told us it was evident that the
same sea which washed them overboard swept the schooner's deck of
everything and carried away her bulwarks: for when, fighting for breath,
they rose to the surface, each of them found himself close to a mass of
floating wreckage, to which he clung desperately, and so was