Page:Adrift in the Pacific, Sampson Low, 1889.djvu/15

Rh Webb and Service and Wilcox stop with the little ones! We four can manage."

Baxter shut the door from within.

"Yes, all of us," Dole had said.

But were there only little boys on board this schooner thus driven before the storm? Yes, only boys! And how many were there? Fifteen, counting Gordon, Briant, Donagan, and the negro. How came they to be there? That you shall know shortly.

Was there not a man on the yacht? Not a captain to look after it? Not a sailor to give a hand in its management? Not a helmsman to steer in such a storm? No 1 Not one!

And more than that — there was not a person on board who knew the schooner's position on the ocean. And what ocean? The largest of all, the Pacific, which stretches for 6000 miles from Australia and New Zealand to the coast of South America.

What, then, had happened? Had the schooner's crew disappeared in some catastrophe? Had the Malay pirates carried them off and left on board only this batch of boys from fourteen downwards? A yacht of a hundred tons ought to have a captain, a mate, and five or six men, and of these all that had been left was the nigger boy!

Where did the schooner come from? From what Australian port or Oceanic archipelago did she hail? How long had she been at sea? Whither was she bound? The boys would probably have been able to answer these questions had they been asked them by any captain speaking the schooner on her course; but there was no vessel in sight, neither steamer nor sailing-ship, and had there been one, she would have had quite enough to do to look after herself, without giving assistance to this yacht that the sea was throwing about like a raft.

Briant and his friends did their utmost to keep the schooner straight ahead.

"What is to be done?" asked Donagan.