Page:Adrift in the Pacific, Sampson Low, 1889.djvu/181

Rh coast so as to get round Cape Froward, and run up the coast of the Brunswick Peninsula to Punta Arena. It was not necessary for him to go so far.

In the morning of the 13th, Service, who was on the look-out in the bow, reported —

"Smoke on the starboard bow!"

"The smoke of a fisherman's fire?" asked Gordon.

"No," said Evans, "that is a steamer's smoke."

In that direction the land was too far off for the smoke from the camp to be seen.

Immediately Briant climbed to the mast-head.

"A ship! a ship!" he shouted.

The ship was soon in sight from the deck. It was a steamer of about eight hundred tons, approaching at the rate of eleven knots an hour.

There were cheers from the sloop, and some of the guns were fired. She was sighted, and ten minutes afterwards she was alongside the Grafton, bound to Australia.

Captain Long, of the Grafton, was immediately told of the wreck of the schooner, the news of which had been very widely spread in England and Amercia, and at once took the sloop's passengers on board. He even offered to take them on direct to Auckland, which would not be very far out of his road, for the Grafton's destination was Melbourne, in the south of Australia.

The voyage was a quick one, and on the 25th of February the steamer cast anchor in Auckland Harbour.

Within a few days two years had elapsed since the fifteen pupils from Charman's School had been cast adrift in the Pacific.

We need not dwell on the joy of the families to whom the boys came back. Of all who had been carried away that long eighteen hundred leagues from New Zealand, not one was missing. When the news spread that the Grafton was in the harbour with the boys on board, the whole town turned out to welcome them.

And how every one longed to hear in detail all that had passed on Charman Island! And curiosity was