ould scarcely draw their breaths.

Now and then, above the tumult of the tempest, the ensign's voice
encouraged them. Whistler, sitting three yards away, could not see the
officer at all.

Then, with the unexpectedness that is the greatest danger of these
off-shore gales, the wind changed once more. It snapped around in a
moment to due west. The cross seas lashed the yawl impetuously.

Whistler heard an oar snap. The man behind him fell upon his back in the
bottom of the yawl. His broken oar entangled with Whistler's, and the
latter lost stroke.

There was a yell from the ensign. Whistler heard Al Torrance shriek. The
next moment the yawl rolled completely over, and he was struggling in
the sea and in the pitchy darkness underneath the overturned boat!

CHAPTER XIX

COINCIDENCE

Whistler kept cool in his mind. As far as his body went, that was icy.

He knew that, after all, he was personally in less danger than those who
had been thrown far from the boat. He could hear nothing of what went on
outside; the rolling and plunging of the overturned yawl continued.

Where had Torry gone? And the ensign, and the other members of the
yawl's crew? Once Whistler had spent a long time in the sea, drifting
about on a hatchcover; having been saved from that perilous adventure,
he was not likely easily to give up hope now.

There was air enough under the overturned yawl, and he knew her
water-tight compartments would keep her afloat indefinitely. But there
might be work for him to do outside.

He might help the other members of the shipwrecked crew. Therefore he
filled his lungs with air and dived under the side of the yawl.

Just as he came out into the open sea he collided with another person
coming down. They seized each others' hands and rose to the surface.

It was Torry! When they popped up and expelled the air from their lungs
and blinked the water from their eyes, each boy instantly recognized the
other.

"Crickey!" coughed Torrance. "I thought we'd lost you."

"Are you all right?" demanded Morgan.

"Just as all right as a fellow can be when he--he can't walk ashore,"
chattered Torry.

"Here's the yawl!" cried Whistler. "Where's Mr. MacMasters? And Rosy and
Slim? And the others?"

But when his eyes were well cleared of the water he beheld the entire
crew of the yawl, including Ensign MacMasters, perched along the yawl's
keel like a string of very much bedrabbled crows on a rail fence.

Strangel