Two Sailor Lads by Gordon Stables

After the boat left the _San Salvador_, with little Cassia-bud steering, and the great Newfoundland, Hurricane Bob, lying at his feet by way of balancing her, and keeping her well down by the stern, "Steer right away for the island," cried Fred. "We are going to row and sing, and never look behind us."

But when they had rowed for fully half an hour, and the ship looked very far away indeed, Frank, who was stroke, lay on his oar, and the others followed suit.

"Why," he said, peeping round, "we ought to be there by now."

"Dear me! " cried Fred, "how deceiving! The island looks as far away as ever!"

"Yes, and it has altered in appearance somehow, hasn't it?"

"Well, of course; but then we are low down in the water, you know. Anyhow, I'm hungry and thirsty both. Happy thought, to have a rest and some lunch."

The good things were brought out accordingly, and everybody, even Hurricane Bob, shared and shared alike. Then Quambo lit a huge pipe, and Magilvray, the sailor -- a stout young fellow with a merry-looking face of his own -- bit a huge quid off a stick of niggerhead, and began to look very contented indeed.

After another half-hour's pulling catspaws began to creep over the water, and a sail was hoisted.

"We'll soon be there now," said Fred.

Immediately after there was a cry from the little black coxswain.

"Oh, massa Fred, I's so frightened!"

"Whatever is the matter, Kashie?"

"See, sah, see! " he cried, pointing away ahead. "De island done go clear away out ob de world, sah!"

It was difficult indeed for any one in the boat to believe his senses. Every one felt dazed, and looked dazed. The island was gone sure enough; yet how or whither seemed inexplicable.

But the wind kept increasing every minute, and to go back now in the teeth of it was utterly impossible. So on and on the little boat flew for a time. The sea had got up so high too, all at once, that they were afraid to venture on lying to, and to lower sail meant being pooped by the racing, threatening waves.

How long they ran before the wind they never could tell. They had given themselves up for lost, however, and sat there in the gathering gloom of the awful thunder-storm silent and despairing, like men without hope and energy.

Fred himself had taken the tiller, and Cassia-bud was crouched in the bottom of the boat, hugging his friend Bob in abject terror.

But if Fred and Frank were puzzled by the disappearance of the fairy-isle, as they had called it, their astonishment knew no bounds when the boat was suddenly caught up by a huge wave, and hurled forward into a chaos of broken water and roaring breakers. Hurled into it? Yes, and hurled over it, into water that was as smooth as a mill-pond stirred by a summer's breeze. Behind them and away in a circle all around breakers foamed and roared and thundered. There was the quick, incessant gleam of lightning from out the blackness of the weather clouds; but yonder, not a hundred yards away, was an island, low and almost level, but fringed with cocoa-nut trees, and with an undergrowth of waving palms and other tropical shrubs.

In five minutes' time the boat was drawn up on the snow-white coral beach, and the thunder-storm had burst over them in all its violence.

By-and-by the sky partially cleared, and though the wind still blew high they crept out from the shelter of a cave in which they had found refuge, and began seriously to consider their position.