, doctor," said the captain;
"but we shall never overtake my vessel, unless something happens. I'd
no business to leave her, and bring away my men."

"I'm sorry, captain," I said deprecatingly. "It seems as if it were my
fault."

"Not it," he said kindly. "It was my fault, lad--mine."

All this while the mist was steadily moving down upon us, and the
captain was watching it with gloomy looks when his eyes were not fixed
upon the schooner, which kept on gliding away. The doctor's face, too,
wore a very serious look, which impressed me more perhaps than the
threatenings of the storm. For, though I knew how terrible the
hurricanes were at times, my experience had always been of them ashore,
and I was profoundly ignorant of what a typhoon might be at sea.

"There," cried the captain at last, after a weary chase, "it's of no
use, my lads, easy it is. I shall make for the land and try to get
inside one of the reefs, doctor, before the storm bursts."

"The schooner is not sailing away now," I said eagerly.

"Not sailing, boy? Why she's slipping away from us like--No, no: you're
right, lad, she's--Pull, my lads, pull; let's get aboard. That Malay
scoundrel has run her on the reef."

CHAPTER FIVE.

HOW WE FOUND JACK PENNY.

The captain's ideas were not quite correct. Certainly the little
trading vessel had been run upon one of the many reefs that spread in
all directions along the dangerous coast; but it was not the Malay who
was the guilty party.

As far as I was concerned it seemed to me a good job, for it brought the
schooner to a stand-still, so that we could overtake it. No thought
occurred to me that the rocks might have knocked a hole in her bottom,
and that if a storm came on she would most likely go to pieces.

Very little was said now, for every one's attention was taken up by the
threatened hurricane, and our efforts to reach the schooner before it
should come on.

It was a long severe race, in which we all took a turn at the oars,
literally rowing as it seemed to me for our lives. At times it was as
if we must be overtaken by the fierce black clouds in the distance,
beneath which there was a long misty white line. The sea-birds kept
dashing by us, uttering wild cries, and there was overhead an intense
silence, while in the distance we could hear a low dull murmuring roar,
that told of the coming mischief.

Every now and then it seemed to me that we must be overtaken by the long
surgin