hat nonsense!"

"Nonsense? Why, I've many a time heard fish sing out when they've been
dragged on board."

"That was a bird," said Lane, as he shaded his eyes to try and pierce
the gloom around them. "There it goes again."

For the cry was repeated, and then answered from behind them, and
followed directly after by a piping whistle and a chirp.

"We're ashore with birds all about us," said Oliver Lane decisively. We
were carried right in by that earthquake wave, and the water has retired
and left us stranded.

"Have it your own way, gentlemen," said the mate. "It's all the same to
me whether my ship's left stranded at the bottom of a dry sea or right
away on land. She's no use now--that's plain enough."

Just then the darkness closed in again, and save for the murmur of
voices in the obscurity, the stillness was terrible. So utterly dark
did it become that anything a yard away was quite invisible, and once
more, suffering one and all from a sensation of dread against which it
was impossible to fight, the occupants of the deck stood waiting to
encounter whatever was next to come.

Oliver Lane was at the age when a youth begins to feel that he is about
to step into a fresh arena--that of manhood, but with a good deal that
is boyish to hold him back. And in those moments, oppressed and
overcome as he was by the long-continued darkness, he felt a strong
disposition to search out a hand so as to cling to whoever was nearest,
but he mastered the desire, and then uttered a sigh of satisfaction, for
Drew, his companion, suddenly thrust a hand beneath his arm and pressed
towards him.

"Company's good," he whispered, "even if you're going to be hanged, they
say; let's keep together, Lane, for I'm not ashamed to say I'm in a
regular stew."

"So's everybody," said the mate frankly. "I've been through a good deal
at sea, gentlemen, but this is about the most awful thing I ever did
encounter. I wouldn't care if we were only able to see what was to
happen next."

A cheer broke out from the crew at that moment, for right overhead the
blackness opened, and a clear, bright ray of light shot down upon the
deck, quivered, faded, shot out again, and then rapidly grew broader and
broader.

"Blue sky!" yelled one of the sailors frantically as a patch appeared;
and in his intense excitement he dashed off into the rapid steps of a
hornpipe.

"Bravo, my lads!" cried the mate, who was as excited as the men. "Cheer
again