r her
to distinguish our signal against the sunset sky, we decided to save
our ammunition until there was no danger of its not being seen from
the ship, there being but three rockets aboard the _Hilda_.

Those few minutes of waiting seemed preternaturally long, and
when the first rocket was finally sent up, everyone watched, with
almost feverish impatience, for the _Burnside's_ return signal. One
minute passed in breathless silence; another minute, during which
we shivered slightly with cold and excitement; ten seconds more,
and a sudden flash in the direction of the ship, which we took to be
a search-light answer to our rocket of distress, was greeted with a
simultaneous yell of delight. But our joy was dampened suddenly by
some one suggesting that the search-light might have been merely a
coincidence as to time, and that the ship was in reality using it, as
often happened, for other purposes. Then, too, as this same Jeremiah
pointed out, a distress rocket would always be answered by a rocket,
or at least by a Coston signal.

There was a general lowering of personal temperature at this, and a
few moments later, with even less confidence than we had sent up the
first rocket, a second one was launched. But this proved a failure,
and went down instead of up, covering the water with a shower of
golden sparks, which hissed and sputtered angrily on the green waves
that were rocking the little _Hilda_ back and forth as if she had
been a cockle-shell. Of course there was no answer to this signal,
for the ship could not have seen it at her great distance.

In the meantime the tide was going out so rapidly that we soon found
ourselves in only two fathoms of water, the _Hilda_ drawing one
and a half fathoms, while every few minutes the bottom of the launch
ground ominously on the rocks below. The pilot of the little craft was
stretched out on the covered hatchway, frightfully seasick from the
churning motion of the boat, when the native engineer, ghastly with
terror, reported to the Governor what we had for some time suspected,
namely, that we were anchored on a coral reef. To stay there much
longer was out of the question, but as the boiler would not work,
the only other alternative was to let the boat drift out to sea on
the tide.

While we were all ostentatiously cool, I think there was not one
among us but mentally computed just how long it would take for
a hole to be knocked in the bottom of the boat, leaving us at the