ain force, and flung him back into the sea, where
he disappeared for ever. "Has Ibraheem reached you?" called out the
captain to the sailor now alone astride of the spar. "Ibraheem is
drowned," came the answer across the waves. "Is drowned," all repeated
in an undertone, adding, "and we too shall soon be drowned also." In
fact, such seemed the only probable end of all our endeavours. For the
storm redoubled in violence; the baling could no longer keep up with the
rate at which the waves entered; the boat became waterlogged; the water
poured in hissing on every side: she was sinking, and we were yet far
out in the open sea.

"Plunge for it!" a second time shouted the captain. "Plunge who may, I
will stay by the boat so long as the boat stays by me," thought I, and
kept my place. Yoosef, fortunately for him, was lying like a corpse,
past fear or motion; but four of our party, one a sailor and the other
three passengers, thinking that all hope of the boat was now over, and
that nothing remained them but the spar, jumped into the sea. Their loss
saved the remainder; the boat lightened and righted for a moment, the
pilot and I baled away desperately; she rose clear once more of the
water. Those in her were now nine in all--eight men and a boy, the
captain's nephew.

Meanwhile the sea was running mountains; and during the paroxysm of
struggle, while the boat pitched heavily, the cord attached from her
stern to the beam snapped asunder. One man was on the spar. Yet a minute
or so the moonlight showed us the heads of the five survivors as they
tried to regain the boat; had they done it we were all lost; then a huge
wave separated them from us. "May God have mercy on the poor drowning
men!" exclaimed the captain: their bodies were washed ashore three or
four days later. We now remained sole survivors--if, indeed, we were to
prove so.

Our men rowed hard, and the night wore on; at last the coast came in
full view. Before us was a high black rock, jutting out into the foaming
sea, whence it rose sheer like the wall of a fortress; at some distance
on the left a peculiar glimmer and a long white line of breakers assured
me of the existence of an even and sandy beach. The three sailors now at
the oars, and the passenger who had taken the place of the fourth, grown
reckless by long toil under the momentary expectation of death, and
longing to see an end anyhow to this protracted misery, were for pushing
the boat on the rocks, becau