o be. The prayer offered up, as those snow-white but
treacherous perils first hove in sight, had been heard on high; and He
who had guided the castaways to the danger, stayed by their side, and
gave strength to their arms to carry them through it.

With a skill drawn from the combination of clear intelligence and long
experience, Captain Redwood set the head of his pinnace straight for the
narrow and dangerous passage; and with a strength inspired by the peril,
Murtagh and the Malay pulled upon their oars, each handling his
respective pair as if his life depended on the effort.

With the united will of oarsmen and steerer the effort was successful;
and ten seconds later the pinnace was safe inside the breakers, moving
along under the impulse of two pairs of oars, that rose and fell as
gently as if they were pulling her over the surface of some placid lake.

In less than ten minutes her keel touched bottom on the sands of Borneo,
and her crew, staggering ashore, dropped upon their knees, and in words
earnest as those uttered by Columbus at Cat Island, or the Pilgrims on
Plymouth Rock, breathed a devout thanksgiving for their deliverance.

CHAPTER SIX.

A GIGANTIC OYSTER.

"Water! water!"

The pain of hunger is among the hardest to endure, though there is still
a harder--that of thirst. In the first hours of either, it is doubtful
which of the two kinds of suffering is the more severe; but, prolonged
beyond a certain point, hunger loses its keenness of edge, through the
sheer weakness of the sufferer, while the agony of thirst knows no such
relief.

Suffering, as our castaways were, from want of food for nearly a week,
their thirst was yet more agonising; and after the thanksgiving prayer
had passed from their lips, their first thought was of water--their cry,
"Water! water!"

As they arose to their feet they instinctively looked around to see if
any brook or spring were near.

An ocean was flowing beside them; but this was not the kind of water
wanted. They had already had enough of the briny element, and did not
even turn their eyes upon it. It was landward they looked; scanning the
edge of the forest, that came down within a hundred yards of the shore--
the strip of sand on which they had beached their boat trending along
between the woods and the tide-water as far as the eye could trace it.
A short distance off, however, a break was discernible in the line of
the sand-strip--which they supposed mus