Page:Adrift in the Pacific, Sampson Low, 1889.djvu/30

 watched night and day. He swept the horizon for any chance of safety. And he threw overboard several bottles containing an account of what had happened to the schooner; it was a slender chance, doubtless, but he did not care to neglect it.

A few hours after the yacht left Hauraki Gulf, the storm arose, and for two weeks it raged with unusual impetuosity. Assaulted by enormous waves, and escaping a hundred times from being overwhelmed by the mountains of water, the yacht had gone ashore on an unknown land in the Pacific.

What was to be the fate of these shipwrecked schoolboys? From what side was help to come to them if they could not help themselves?

Their families had only too good reason to suppose that they had been swallowed up. When it was found that the yacht had disappeared the alarm was given. We need not dwell on the consternation produced by the news.

Without losing an instant, the harbour-master sent out two small steamers in search, with orders to explore the gulf and some miles beyond it. All that night, though the sea grew rough, the little steamers sought in vain; and when day came and they returned to Auckland, it was to deprive the unfortunate relatives of every hope. They had not found the schooner, but they had found the wreckage knocked away in collision by the Quito — a collision of which those on board the Quito knew nothing.

And in this wreckage were three or four letters of the schooner's name.

It seemed certain that the yacht had met with disaster, and gone down with all on board within a dozen miles of New Zealand.