“The mate was on the bridge, and it wasn’t long before we found out that he was drunk, and he must have had a bottle up there with him, for he kept getting drunker. Once in awhile he’d come down and raise Cain, and then go back and curse us from up there till everybody was in a blue fright. We didn’t know what he might do with the ship, and the watch below came on deck without being called.
“Just a little before six bells struck, I heard a yell, and I found that he’d pitched the helmsman clear off the bridge, and taken the wheel himself. That part of the channel is full of reefs and islands, and we heard surf in about half an hour,—straight ahead the breakers sounded, and the mate appeared to be running her dead on them.
“Three or four of the men made a rush for the bridge to take the wheel away from him, and some one went down to call the captain. But before the mutineers were half-way up the iron ladder, the mate had his pistol out, and shot the top man through the head, and he knocked down the rest as he fell. By this time we could see the surf, spouting tall and white like geysers, but it was too dark to see the land. The captain came on deck, half-dressed and looking wild, but he was hardly up when the mate gave a whoop, rang for full speed ahead, and ran her square on the reef.
“She struck with a bang that seemed to smash everything on board. I was pitched half the length of the deck, it seemed to me, and next minute a big roller picked her up and lifted her over the reef and set her down hard, with another terrific bump.
“When we’d picked ourselves up we couldn’t see anything at all, and the spray was flying over us in bucketfuls. The steam was blowing off, all the lights had gone out, and the old boat was lying almost on her port rails, shaking like a leaf at every big sea. Still there didn’t seem to be much danger of her breaking up right away, and we settled down after awhile to wait for daylight.
“When the light came back we saw that we were up against a long, barren island, about half a mile across I should think, with one rocky hill, and no trees, no natives, nor anything. We were stuck on a bunch of reefs nearly a mile from shore, and we were half-full of water. When we looked her over, we found that she was cracking in two, so we got ready to launch the boats. Two of the men were missing, and we never saw any more of the captain; we supposed that they had been pitched overboard when she struck. The mate had been knocked off the bridge and appeared to be hurt. He was lying groaning against the deckhouse, but nobody paid any attention to him.
“We got one of the starboard boats into the water with six men in it, and it was smashed and swamped against the side before it was fairly afloat. We threw lines and things, but only fished out one of the crew. I got into the second boat myself, and we managed to fend off from the ship, and got on pretty well till we came close to the shore. It was a bad landing-place when there was any sea running, but we tried it, and piled her all up in the surf. I got tossed on shore somehow,—I don’t know how,—but presently I found myself half in the water and half out, with a bleeding crack in my head, and most of the skin scraped off my arms and legs. I looked for the rest of the boat’s crew, but none of them came ashore—alive, that is.
“In about half an hour I saw them put another boat overboard, but this one shared the fate of the first, and I don’t think anybody was saved. There was still too much sea running to launch boats.
“I lay around on the shingle in a sort of silly state from the crack on my head, waiting for some one to come and find me, but nobody came. About noon, I guess, I saw another boat skimming round the corner of the island with a sail set, and four or five men in her. I tried to signal her, but she went out of sight, and that was the last I saw of any of the people of the Clara McClay.
“Everybody seemed to be off the ship, and it looked like I was the only one to get to the island. That night the wind and sea got up tremendously; the spray flew clean over the island, and I got up on the hill to keep from being washed off. In the morning I saw that the ship had cracked right open and broken in two, with her stern sticking on the rocks and the bow part slipping forward into the lagoon. All sorts of things were cast ashore that day,—but, say, there isn’t anything in the Robinson Crusoe business. There was about fifty tons of wreckage and cargo scattered over the beach, but I couldn’t do anything with wood and hardware, and I had all I could do to find grub enough for a square meal. Later I found more.”