ot visible from their
location, and they were compelled to thread their way down again and go
around the broken side of the cliff walls.

As they were about to ascend Harry called out: "Look at the boat,
George! Run quick, it is adrift!" The wind had quickened, and they
realized their carelessness in securing it at the landing place, and
before George, who was lower down, could reach the water's edge, it was
washed around the point of the rock, out of his reach.

Here was a dilemma. The boat lost, and no means to reach the mainland
without swimming. The place where they landed was less than five hundred
feet from the spot where they were cast ashore months before.
Innumerable large rocks, detached from each other, formed the immense
tier of sentinels for this part of the coast, and Harry's trip across,
when he had the benefit of the life-preserver, was an entirely different
thing from their present condition.

To add to the perplexity of the situation, George was not a good
swimmer, and he doubted his ability to make the trip across the channels
between the rocks which separated them from the mainland.

"Why not try to find the object we saw while we were out at sea?"

"Good idea. But I would like to know how we are going to get up?"

"Wasn't that a silly trick, to be so careless about our boat. What will
the Professor say?"

At last, after repeated trials, they found a way which led them up the
craggy sides, to the object they had seen.

"It is our life-boat," was Harry's excited cry. "That is, what is left
of it."

We have previously detailed how, when they struck the rock, on that
eventful day, months before, the boat had apparently been broken in two,
and they saw only the stern of the boat held within a saddle of the
rock; and how, at the next great wave, even that portion had
disappeared. Here was the battered and broken-up part that remained.

"Do you think this part would float?"

"I suppose it would, but how can we get it down?"

They sat down, not discouraged, but annoyed at their own stupidity and
carelessness. Night was approaching, and sitting down would not remedy
matters. It was low tide, and the waters had receded, so that the
wrecked boat was now fully twenty-five feet from the water. It was held
within a wedge in the rocks, tilted up, and it was too heavy for them to
lift. If they could possibly dislodge it, so as to push it over the
edge, it would probably be crushed to pieces in tumblin