ain
told him, "and hurry. Happen your eyes are sharper than Abner's. Sing
out when you spy the reef. We will heave to, and then God be with you,
my lad, to find us out the channel to the cove!"

Chris ran forward to the bow of the _Mirabelle_, and out along the
bowsprit where, at the tip, he could see the long form of Abner Cloud
stretched out at full length. They murmured a greeting and waited,
eyes straining ahead.

Then both saw the phosphorus gleam and fade, gleam and fade as the
waves broke over the coral. Eerie jade-green and white-gold, the
phosphorus shone in the starlight.

"Reef-ho!" sang out Abner, and the sound of his shout was echoed back
from the closeness of the shore in faint dangerous mockery.
"_Reef-ho!_"

"Reef-ho!" came a third time from the bridge, and then "Heave-ho!"
thundered Captain Blizzard. "Drop anchor, lads!"

Abner left his place to go back and lend a hand, and in his sudden
solitude Chris grasped a rope and swung down to the water.

A porpoise slipped away from the _Mirabelle_ and moved this way and
that to get its bearings. Then the mass of the reef to the left and
the hidden shelf of a second but obscured underwater reef to the right
made dark patches in the phosphorescence. Far below lay the ghostly
spread of sand, and the porpoise nosed its way forward.

The channel to the cove proved to be some five hundred yards long, and
it seemed no time before the porpoise passed from the shadow of the
trees at the shore into the starlit cup of the cove. Taking a turn
about in the enjoyment of flipping its fins and giving a leap or two,
the big fish then went back toward where the _Mirabelle_ hung
suspended on the glassy sea.

A boy it was that pulled himself up hand over hand along the anchor
rope and stood dripping sea water on the bridge before Captain
Blizzard.

"I've found the channel, sir," he said, abruptly conscious of his
importance from the admiring way in which Amos was staring at him.
"There's a dangerous shelf of coral that juts out on the port side--if
you let me go first, and the men man the boats and row her in, I think
we shall do it safely even in this light."

Captain Blizzard looked at him, his expression both serious and
trusting.

"Well lad, we do what we must, and you and I understand one another.
Ahoy there!" he roared down to the shadowy decks from which the black
spikes of masts rose high to break the sky. "Man the boats! We shall
tow the _Mirabelle_ to co