s.

"'I don't know how we lived!' he snarled. 'What in the name of God made
you try it? Nothing but luck--and now the typhoon's leaving us. We can
wait here till the blow dies down.'

"'Is that all, Captain, that you have to say?' inquired Lee Fu, his
attention riveted on the course.

"Wilbur clutched the rail as if he would tear it from its fastenings. 'A
damned sight more, you blackguard; but I'll save it for the
authorities!'

"'You feel no thanks for your escape--and there is nothing on your
mind?'

"'Nothing but sleep--why should there be? Let's wind up this farce and
get to anchor somewhere; I'm fagged out.'

"'No, we are going on,' said Lee Fu calmly, making no move to come into
the wind. 'No time for rest, Captain; the journey is not done.'

"'Going on?' He turned fiercely, and for a moment he and Lee Fu gazed
deep into each other's eyes in a grapple that gave no quarter.

"'Yes, Captain!' cried Lee Fu sharply. 'We have not yet reached the spot
where the "Speedwell" met her doom. Now go! I cannot waste time in
talk.'

"Since this experience, I've many times examined the charts of the
region," Nichols went on. "But they don't begin to show it all. Beyond
the middle island stretched a larger island, distant some five miles
from the other; and between them lay the most intricate, extraordinary
and terrible nest of reefs ever devised by the mind of the Maker and the
hand of geologic change.

"The outlying fringe of reefs that had broken first approach ended at
the middle island; beyond that to windward lay clear water, and the nest
of reefs that I've mentioned received the full force of the wind and
sea. Five miles of water stretched in mad confusion, a solid whiteness
of spouting foam that seemed to hold a hideous illumination. Beyond the
point of the middle island the long wind-swept rollers burst in tall
columns of spray that shut off the view like a curtain as we drew near,
where the rocks began in an unbroken wall.

"It was directly against this wall that Lee Fu was driving the sampan.
The first lift of the outside swell had already caught us. I held my
breath, as moment by moment we cut down the margin of safety. No use to
interfere; perhaps he knew what he was doing; perhaps he actually had
gone mad under the terrific strain. As he steered, he seemed to be
watching intently for landmarks. Was it possible that he still knew his
bearings, that there was a way through?

"Wilbur, at Lee Fu's comma