heavy sea that is now running. She would be
swamped by the first roller that came in upon us, for the wind is
blowing dead on shore!"

"That may be," replied Fritz; "still, I should like to do something,
even if I knew it would be useless!"

"So should I," said Eric, disconsolately.

In silence, the two continued to pace up and down the little platform
they had levelled in front of their hut, trying to pierce the darkness
that now entirely obscured the sea, the north-easter having brought up a
thick fog in its train, perhaps from the far-distant African coast,
which shut out everything on that side; although, the light of the
bonfire still illumined the cliff encircling the valley where they had
pitched their homestead, disclosing the inmost recesses of this, so that
they could see from where they stood, the wood, which the conflagration
had spared, as well as their garden and the tussock-grass rookery of the
penguins beyond, not a feature of the landscape being hid.

Again came the booming, melancholy sound of the minute guns from sea,
making the brothers more impatient than ever; and, at that moment, the
fog suddenly lifted, being rapidly wafted away to leeward over the
island, enabling the two anxious watchers to see a bit of bright sky
overhead, with a twinkling star or two looking down on the raging ocean,
now exposed to their gaze--all covered with rolling breakers and
seething foam as far as the eye could reach, to the furthest confines of
the horizon beyond the bay.

Still, they could perceive nothing of the ship that had been firing the
signals of distress, till, all at once, another gun was heard; and the
flash, which caught their glance at the same moment as the report
reached them, now enabled them to notice her imminent peril. This, the
people on board could only then have noticed for the first time, the fog
having previously concealed their danger; for they distinctly heard,
above the noise of the sea and wind, a hoarse shout of agonised, frantic
alarm, wafted shorewards by the wind in one of its wild gusts.

The vessel was coming up under close-reefed topsails, bow on to the
headland on the western side of the bay; and, almost at the very instant
the brothers saw her, she struck with a crash on the rocks, the surf
rushing up the steep face of the cliff and falling back on the deck of
the ill-fated craft in sheets of spray like soapsuds.

Fritz and Eric clasped their hands in mute supplication to