er crew had
carried away. The only things left of any value were the charred
remnants of the hammocks and bedding which had belonged to the sailors.

"Hurrah!" shouted Otto, with a sudden burst of joy, as he leaped forward
and dragged out a quantity of the bedding; "here's what'll make fire at
last! You said, Dom, that burnt rag was capital tinder. Well, here we
have burnt sheets enough to last us for years to come!"

"That's true," returned Dominick, laughing at his brother's enthusiasm;
"let's go aft and see if we can stumble on something more."

But the examination of the after part of the vessel yielded no fruit.
As we have said, that part was sunk deeply, so that only the cabin
skylight was above water, and, although they both gazed intently down
through the water with which the cabin was filled, they could see
nothing whatever. With a boat-hook which they found jammed in the port
bulwarks, they poked and groped about for a considerable time, but
hooked nothing, and were finally obliged to return empty-handed to the
anxious Pauline.

Otto did not neglect, however, to carry off a pocketful of
burnt-sheeting, by means of which, with flint and steel, they were
enabled that night to eat their supper by the blaze of a cheering fire.
The human heart when young, does not quickly or easily give way to
despondency. Although the Rigondas had thus been cast on an island in
the equatorial seas, and continued week after week to dwell there,
living on wild fruits and eggs, and such animals and birds as they
managed to snare, with no better shelter than a rocky cavern, and with
little prospect of a speedy release, they did not by any means mourn
over their lot.

"You see," remarked Otto, one evening when his sister wondered, with a
sigh, whether their mother had yet begun to feel very anxious about
them, "you see, she could not have expected to hear much before this
time, for the voyage to Eastern seas is always a long one, and it is
well known that vessels often get blown far out of their courses by
monsoons, and simoons, and baboons, and such like southern hurricanes,
so motherkins won't begin to grow anxious, I hope, for a long time yet,
and it's likely that before she becomes _very_ uneasy about us, some
ship or other will pass close enough to see our signals and take us off
so--"

"By the way," interrupted Dominick, "have you tried to climb our
signal-tree, as you said you would do, to replace the flag that was