owball asleep! Ha! ha! ha! See the old sea-cook!
Verily, that steering-oar has escaped from his hand!"

Almost instantly succeeded the shout that betokened alarm, followed by a
series of hurried phrases, indicating the danger itself.

"The boom,--the boom! 'Tis coming round! Look out, Lalee! look out!"

As he gave utterance to these words of warnings the boy sprang towards
his companion, with arms outstretched, to protect her.

The action came too late. The steering-oar, held in the hands of the
sleeper, hung suspended high above the water. The _Catamaran_, left
without control, luffed suddenly round beam-end to the wind; the boom
obeyed the impulse of the breeze; and Lilly Lalee, uplifted upon its
end, was brushed off from the craft, and jerked far out upon the blue
bosom of the ocean!

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

"OVERBOARD!"

The cry came from little William, as the Portuguese girl, lifted on the
end of the boom, was pitched far out into the sea.

The utterance was merely mechanical; and as it escaped from his lips,
the sailor-lad rushed towards the edge of the raft, and placed himself
in an attitude to plunge into the water,--with the design of swimming to
the rescue of Lalee.

Just then the boom, suddenly recoiling, came back with a rapid sweep;
and, striking him across the shins, sent him sprawling over the
shoulders of Ben Brace, and right into the sea-chest, in front of which
the sailor was still kneeling.

Ben had heard that significant cry of alarm, and almost simultaneously
the "plash" made by the little Portuguese as her body dropped down upon
the water. He had slewed himself round, and was making a hurried effort
to get to his feet, when the boy, flung with violence upon his stooping
back, once more brought him to his knees.

As William was chucked right over him into the chest the sailor soon
recovered from the shock, and rising erect, cried out in a half-confused
manner,--"Overboard! Who? Where? _Not_ you, Will'm! What is't, boy?"

"O Ben! Ben!" answered William, as he lay kicking among the contents of
the kit, "Lilly Lalee, she's knocked overboard by the boom! Save her!
save her!"

The sailor needed neither the information nor the appeal thus addressed
to him. His interrogations had been altogether mechanical, for the
plunge he had heard, and the absence of the girl from the raft,--
ascertained by a single glance,--told him which of the _Catamaran's_
crew it was who had falle