Page:Adrift in the Pacific, Sampson Low, 1889.djvu/22

 high; in the foreground was a yellowish beach ending towards the right in a rounded mass which seemed to belong to a forest further inland.

Ah! If the schooner could reach the sandy beach without meeting with a line of reefs, if the mouth of a river would only offer a refuge, her passengers might perhaps escape safe and sound!

Leaving Donagan, Gordon, and Moko, at the helm, Briant went forward and examined the land which he was nearing so rapidly. But in vain did he look for some place in which the yacht could be run ashore without risk. There was the mouth of no river or stream not even a sandbank, on which they could run her aground; but there was a line of breakers with the black heads of rock rising amid the undulations of the surge, where at the first shock the schooner would be wrenched to pieces.

It occurred to Briant that it would be better for all his friends to be on deck when the crash came, and opening the companion-door he shouted down,—

"Come on deck, every one of you!"

Immediately out jumped the dog, and then the eleven boys one after the other, the smallest at the sight of the mighty waves around them beginning to yell with terror.

It was a little before six in the morning when the schooner reached the first line of breakers.

"Hold on, all of you!" shouted Briant, stripping off half his clothes, so as to be ready to help those whom the surf swept away, for the vessel would certainly strike.

Suddenly there came a shock. The schooner had grounded under the stern. But the hull was not damaged, and no water rushed in. A second wave took her fifty feet further, just skimming the rocks that ran above the water level in quite a thousand places. Then she heeled over to port and remained motionless, surrounded by the boiling surf.

She was not in the open sea, but she was a quarter of a mile from the beach.