Currents and counter-currents prevented the brave boy from keeping a straight line, and when he entered them he could with difficulty make his way through. Gradually he made his way towards the beach, but it was evident that his strength was failing him. He had not gone twenty yards from the schooner when he entered a whirlpool caused by the meeting of two streams of surf. If he could get round it or through it, all might be well, for the sea beyond was calm. He tried to pass it on the left hand, but the attempt was a failure. A strong swimmer in the pride of life would have tried in vain. The whirlpool seized him, and drew him irresistibly to the centre.

‘Help! Pull! Pull!’ he shouted, and then he disappeared.

On the yacht terror was at its height. ‘Haul away!’ said Gordon coolly. And the boys hauled as if for their lives, and in less than a minute Briant was on board—unconscious, it is true, but soon brought back to life in his brother’s arms. That attempt had failed. What was to be done now?

Were they to wait? To wait for what? Help? And where was help to come from?

It was now past noon, and the tide began to make, and the surf increased as the water rose. And as it was new moon the tide would be higher than the evening before. And the wind had gone down but little; and the schooner might be lifted from its rocky bed, and strike again, and be shattered on the reef! And no one would survive! And yet nothing could be done!

In the stern the young boys gathered round the older ones, and watched the waters rise, and the rocks disappear in turn beneath the surf. The wind had gone round to the west again, and beat full on the shore. As the water deepened the waves rose, and rolled and broke up against her. By two o’clock the schooner had recovered from her heel and was upright, and her bow was free, and being dashed up and down on the rocks, while her stern remained firmly fixed. Soon she began to roll from side to side, and the boys had to cling together to prevent being thrown overboard. Suddenly a foaming mountain came rolling in from the open sea, and rose a few feet from the stern of the yacht. It was over twenty feet high; it came with the fury of a torrent; it covered the reef; it lifted the schooner from the rocks, and without even grazing them swept her onward: in less than a minute, amid the roaring mass of water, the wreck was carried to the beach, and laid on the sand within a couple of hundred feet of the trees at the foot of the clift. And there it remained, while the sea flowed back and left it high and dry.

CHAPTER III—CAST ADRIFT

AT the time of our story, Charman’s boarding-school was one of the largest in Auckland, New Zealand. It boasted about a hundred pupils belonging to the best families in the colony, and the course of study and the management were the same as in high-class schools at home.

The archipelago of New Zealand has two principal islands, the North Island and the Middle Island, separated by Cook Strait. It lies between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels of south latitude—a position equivalent to that part of the northern hemisphere occupied by France and Northern Africa. The North Island is much cut into at its southern end, and forms an irregular trapezium prolonged at its north-western angle and terminated by the North Cape and Cape Van Diemen. Just where the curve begins, and where the peninsula is only a few miles across, the town of Auckland is situated. Its position is similar to that of Corinth in Greece, and to that fact is due its name of the Corinth of the South. It has two harbours, one on the west, one on the east, the latter on Hauraki Gulf being rather shallow, so that long piers have had to be built into it where the smaller vessels can unload. One of these piers is Commercial Pier at the foot of Queen Street; and about half way up Queen Street was Charman’s school.

On the 15th of February, 1880, in the afternoon, a crowd of boys and their relatives came out of the schoolhouse into Queen Street, merry and happy as birds just escaped from their cage. It was the beginning of the holidays. Two months of independence; two months of liberty! And for some of the boys there was the prospect of a sea voyage which had been talked about in school for months. How the others envied those who were to go on this cruise in which New Zealand was to be circumnavigated! The schooner had been chartered by the boys’ friends, and fitted out for a voyage of six weeks.