It will scarcely surprise the reader to be told that, after the first emotions of thankfulness for deliverance from what had appeared to the shipwrecked mariners to be inevitable death, a feeling amounting almost to despair took possession of the whole party for a time.

 

The sandbank was so low that in stormy weather it was almost submerged. It was a solitary coral reef in the midst of the boundless sea. Not a tree or bush grew upon it, and except at the point where the ship had struck, there was scarcely a rock large enough to afford shelter to a single man. Without provisions, without sufficient shelter, without the means of escape, and almost without the hope of deliverance, it seemed to them that nothing awaited them but the slow, lingering pains and horrors of death by starvation.

 

As those facts forced themselves more and more powerfully home to the apprehension of the crew,—while they cowered for shelter from the storm under the lee of the rocky point, they gave expression to their feelings in different ways. Some sat down in dogged silence to await their fate; others fell on their knees and cried aloud to God for mercy; while a few kept up their own spirits and those of their companions by affecting a cheerfulness which, however, in some cages, was a little forced. Ailie lay shivering in her father’s arms, for she was drenched with salt water and very cold. Her eyes were closed, and she was very pale from exposure and exhaustion, but her lips moved as if in prayer.

 

Captain Dunning looked anxiously at Dr Hopley, who crouched beside them, and gazed earnestly in the child’s face while he felt her pulse.

 

“It’s almost too much for her, I fear,” said the captain, in a hesitating, husky voice.

 

The doctor did not answer for a minute or two, then he said, as if muttering to himself rather than replying to the captain’s remark, “If we could only get her into dry clothes, or had a fire, or even a little brandy, but—” He did not finish the sentence, and the captain’s heart sank within him, and his weather-beaten face grew pale as he thought of the possibility of losing his darling child.

 

Glynn had been watching the doctor with intense eagerness, and with a terrible feeling of dread fluttering about his heart. When he heard the last remark he leaped up and cried— “If brandy is all you want you shall soon have it.” And running down to the edge of the water, he plunged in and grasped the cable, intending to clamber into the ship, which had by this time been driven higher on the rocks, and did not suffer so much from the violence of the breakers. At the same instant Phil Briant sprang to his feet, rushed down after him, and before he had got a yard from the shore, seized him by the collar, and dragged him out of the sea high and dry on the land.

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