d drink for Heaven alone knew how long!

Recognising the vital necessity for instant action, however, I groped
for an oar, found it, and threw it out over the lee quarter of the boat,
at the same time staring into the darkness in an endeavour to locate the
sandbank. That, now, was our only hope, for to drive out to sea in such
a craft as ours on such a night as that simply meant our speedy
destruction. The boat, low as she sat on the water, without even so
much as a naked mast for the wind to act upon, was skimming along at a
surprising speed, and would soon be in the open ocean unless I could
find the sandbank and secure her to it.

I thought for a moment of the bearings of the bank in relation to the
position of the ship and the direction of the wind, and then, having
decided this point, I brought the boat to the wind on the starboard
tack, so to speak, found that she answered her helm better than I had
dared to hope, forging ahead with the pressure of the wind on her
weather side, and some ten minutes later had the satisfaction of feeling
her ground and bring up dead upon something that could be none other
than the bank which I was so anxious to reach. But the moment that she
grounded, the waves, although they were not very much more than mere
ripples here, began to slop in over her weather side. That, I knew,
would never do, for if it did nothing worse it would at least interfere
with the comfort of my passengers. Therefore, since I was already wet
through to the skin, I nipped over the side into knee-deep water, put my
shoulder under the boat's slanting bow, shoved her afloat again and,
with the broken painter in my hand, waded along the margin of the bank,
towing the boat after me, until presently I had worked her round to the
lee side of the bank. For a few yards' breadth the water here was
perfectly smooth, and I grounded her afresh, dragging her up as high as
I could on the bank and anchoring her by her painter to an oar thrust as
deep into the sand as I could force it. I clambered back into the boat,
thrust my head in under the deck, and shouted:

"Are you all here?"

"Yes; we are all here, and quite safe--so far," answered Mrs
Vansittart. "But what has happened, Walter? We have been washed off
the wreck, have we not?"

"Yes," I replied, "and are now grounded on the lee margin of the
sandbank, where I believe we are reasonably safe, provided that we don't
strike adrift--and I think there is not m