But the boys did not give that a thought. In this land, which had offered itself so unexpectedly to their sight, they saw, they could only see, a means of safety.

And now the wind blew with still greater strength, the schooner, carried along like a feather, was hurled towards the coast, which stood out like a line of ink on the whitish waste of sky. In the background was a cliff, from a hundred and fifty to two hundred feet 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 run 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.

CHAPTER II—THE WRECK

The veil of mist had gone, and the eye could range over a wide expanse round the schooner. The clouds still chased each other with extreme rapidity, and the storm had lost none of its strength. But it might be its last great effort so far as concerned this unknown land in the Pacific. It was to be hoped so, for the state of affairs was as perilous now as it had been during the night when the schooner was writhing in the open sea. Huddled together, the boys might well think themselves lost, as wave after wave came dashing against the nettings and covering them with spray. The shocks were so violent that the schooner could not possibly endure them long. But though at every blow she quivered in her frame, there did not seem to be a plank started from the time she grounded until she was thrust amid this rocky frame. Briant and Gordon had been below and reported that the water had not gained entry to the hull; and they did their best to cheer up their comrades— particularly the little ones.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Briant. ‘The yacht is strongly built; the coast is near. Wait, and we will try to reach the shore.’

‘And why wait?’ asked Donagan.

‘Yes—why?’ added another boy, about twelve years old, named Wilcox. ‘Donagan is right. Why wait?’

‘Because the sea is too high at present, and we should be thrown out among the rocks’, answered Briant.

‘And if the yacht goes to pieces?’ asked a third boy, named Webb, who was about the same age as Wilcox.

‘I do not think there is much fear of that,’ said Briant; ‘at least till the tide turns. When it goes out we can see about saving ourselves.’

Briant was right. Although the tides are not very considerable in the Pacific, their range is enough to cause an appreciable difference of level between high and low water.

There would therefore be an advantage in waiting a few hours, particularly if the wind dropped. The ebb might leave a part of the reef dry, and it would then be less dangerous to leave the schooner and easier to cross the quarter of a mile which separated her from the beach.

Reasonable as was this advice Donagan and two or three others were not prepared to follow it; and they formed a small crowd in the bow and talked in whispers. During the schooner’s passage they had consented to obey Briant’s orders, on account of his knowledge of seamanship, but they had always intended to resume their freedom of action once they got ashore. And this was particularly the case with Donagan, who, in respect of education and ability, considered himself a long way the superior of Briant and the rest. Briant happened to be of French birth, and, not unnaturally, the English were by no means disposed to knock under to him.

So Donagan, Wilcox, Webb, and Cross stood in the bow and looked away across the sheet of foam, dotted with eddies, furrowed with currents which looked dangerous enough to satisfy any of them. The most skilful swimmer would have struggled in vain against the troubled tide that ebbed in the teeth of the boisterous wind. The advice to wait for an hour or two was only too sensible, and Donagan and his supporters had to yield to the evidence of their own eyes, and returned to the stern among the younger boys, just as Briant was saying to them, —

‘Above all things, do not separate! Let us keep together, or we are lost.’

‘Do you presume to lay down the law for us?’ exclaimed Donagan.

‘I presume nothing,’ said Briant ‘except what is for the safety of all.’

‘Briant is right,’ said Gordon, who never spoke without thinking, and took things generally in a cool, quiet sort of way.

‘Yes! yes!’ joined in two or three of the youngsters, who felt drawn towards Briant by a secret instinct.

Donagan did not reply, but he and his friends kept away from the rest, and waited till it was time to begin work at saving themselves.

And now what was the land? Did it belong to one of the isles of the Pacific Ocean or to some Continent? The question could not be answered, for the schooner was too near the shore for a long enough section of the coast-line to be seen. She was aground in a large bay, ended by two capes—that towards the north being high and hilly, that towards the south a long low spur. But beyond these capes did the sea run off as if to surround an island?

If it happened to be an island, how were the boys to get away if they failed to float the schooner, which at high water might possibly be dashed to pieces on the reef? And if the island were a desert one—and there are such in the Pacific—how could these lads support existence for any time on the provisions they might save from the wreck?

On a continent the chances of safety would be much greater, for the continent could be no other than South America.