In the Pacific, ships bound from Australia to America, or from America to Australia, take a more northerly or more southerly route than that taken by the yacht. Not one was sighted, and although the wind moderated occasionally, yet it never ceased blowing from the westward.

How long this drifting was to last, neither Briant nor his comrades knew. In vain they tried to get the schooner back into New Zealand waters. It was under these conditions that Briant displaying energy superior to his age, began to exercise an influence over his companions, to which even Donagan submitted. Although with Moko’s help he could not succeed in getting the yacht to the westward, he could, and did, manage to keep her navigable. He did not spare himself. He 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 school-boys? 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.

CHAPTER IV—THE FIRST DAY ASHORE

The shore was deserted, as Briant had discovered when he was on the foremast crosstrees. For an hour the schooner lay on her bed of sand, and no native was seen. There was no sign of house or hut either under the trees, in front of the cliff, or on the banks of the rivulet, now full with the waters of the rising tide. There was not even the print of a human foot on the beach, which the tide had bordered with a long line of seaweed. At the mouth of the river there was no fishing-boat to be seen, and no smoke arose in the air along the whole curve of the bay between the northern and southern capes.

The first idea that occurred to Briant and Gordon was to get through the trees and ascend the cliffs behind.

‘We are on land, that is something!’ said Gordon; ‘but what is this land which seems uninhabited?’

‘The important thing is that it is not uninhabitable,’ answered Briant ‘We have food and ammunition for some time. We want a shelter of some sort, and we must find one—at least for the youngsters.’

‘Yes. Right you are!’

‘As to finding out where we are,’ said Briant, ‘there will be time enough for that when we have nothing else to do. If it is a continent, we may perhaps be rescued. If it is an island! an uninhabited island—well we shall see! Come, Gordon, let us be off on our voyage of discovery.’

They soon readied the edge of the trees, which ran off on the slant from the cliff to the right bank of the stream, three or four hundred yards above its mouth.

In the wood there was no sign of the passage of man, not a track, not a footpath. Old trunks, fallen through old age, lay on the ground, and the boys sank to their knees in the carpet of dead leaves. But the birds flew away in alarm as if they had learnt that man was their enemy, and it was therefore likely that if the island was not inhabited, it was occasionally visited by the natives of a neighbouring territory.

In ten minutes the boys were through the wood, which grew thicker where the rocks at the back rose like a wall for a hundred and eighty feet. Was there in this wall any break or hollow which would afford them a refuge? A cave sheltered from the winds of the sea by the curtain of trees, and beyond the reach of the sea even in storms would be the very place for the boys to take up as their quarters until a careful exploration enabled them to move further inland.

Unluckily the wall was as bare of irregularity as the curtain of a fortification. There was no cave, nor was there any place where the cliff could be climbed. To reach the interior the shore would have to be followed till the cliff ended.

For half an hour Briant and his companion kept on to the southward along the foot of the cliff, and then they reached the right bank of the stream, which came meandering in from the east. On the right bank they stood under the shade of the lofty trees; but the left bank bordered a country of very different aspect; flat and verdureless, it looked like a wide marsh extending to the southern horizon. Disappointed in their hope of reaching the top of the cliff where they might have had a view of many miles over the country, the boys returned to the wreck.

Donagan and a few others were strolling among the rocks, while Jenkins, Iverson, Dole and Costar were amusing themselves by collecting shellfish. The explorers reported the result of their journey. Until a more distant expedition could be undertaken, it seemed best not to abandon the wreck, which, although stove in below and heeling considerably, would do very well as a temporary dwelling-place. The deck had been half torn up forward, but the saloons yielded ample shelter against a storm. The galley had not been damaged at all, to the very great satisfaction of the smaller boys. It was lucky for them that the things had not had to be carried from the wreck to the shore. If the schooner had remained in her first position on the reef, it is difficult to see how the many useful articles could have been saved.