ttle stern cabin. Then there was a clatter of
blocks, and on coming out again he found the others swinging a boat
over. Charly and he and two of the Indians dropped into her, and
Dampier, who had hove the schooner to, looked down on them over her
rail.

"If you knock the bottom out of her put a jacket on an oar, and I'll
try to bring you off," he said. "If you don't signal I'll stand off
and on with a thimble-header topsail over the mainsail. You'll start
back right away if you see us haul it down. When she won't stand that
there'll be more surf than you'll have any use for with the wind dead
on the beach."

Wyllard made a sign of comprehension, and they slid away on the back of
a long sea. Others rolled up behind them, cutting off the schooner's
hull so that only her grey canvas showed above dim slopes of water, but
there was no curl on any and the beach rose fast. It looked very
forbidding with the spray-haze drifting over it, and the long wash of
the Pacific weltering among its hammered stones, and when they drew a
little nearer Wyllard stood up with the big sculling oar in his hand.
There was no point to offer shelter, and in only one place could he see
a strip of surf-lapped sand.

"It's a little softer than the boulders, anyway; we'll try it there,"
he said.

The oars dipped again, and in another minute or two the sea that came
up behind them hove them high and broke into a little spout of foam.
The next had a hissing crest, part of which splashed on board, and they
went shorewards like a toboggan down an icy slide on the shoulders of
the third. To keep her straight while it seethed about them was all
that they could do, but it was also essentially necessary, and for a
moment their hearts were in their mouths when it left them to sink with
a dizzy swing into the hollow. Then they pulled desperately as another
white-topped ridge came on astern, and went up with it amidst a chaotic
frothing and splashing and a haze of spray. After that there was a
shock and a crash, and they sprang out knee-deep and held fast to the
boat while the foam boiled into her, floundering and stumbling over
sliding sand. Still, before the next sea came in they had run her up
beyond its reach, and there did not seem to be much the matter with her
when they hove her over. Wyllard, however, looked back at the tumbling
surf.

"Dampier was right about that topsail; it won't be quite as easy
getting off," he said. "You'll stan