"There's a reef just ahead; when we strike try to cross it into the stiller water."
At that moment it seemed as if the sandy reef had suddenly shot up from below, striking the bottom of the boat as a trip-hammer might, and shivering it into fragments. What had really happened was this: the boat, driving forward on the crest of a wave, had been carried to a point immediately over the sand ridge or reef, and there suddenly dropped by the receding of the wave. It had struck the sandy bottom with sufficient violence to crush its sides and bottom into a shapeless mass.
The boys were wellnigh stunned by the blow, but rallying quickly they ran forward in water only a few inches deep, and before the next incoming wave struck, they had crossed the narrow sand reef, and plunged into the deep, but comparatively still water that lay inside. The surf was broken, of course, upon the reef, and although the waves passed completely over it, their force was expended upon it, so that inside the barrier the boys found the water disturbed by nothing more than a swell. The distance to the shore was small, and they soon swam it, pulling themselves out on the sand, drenched, bare-headed, bootless, and weary beyond expression, not so much from exertion as from the strain through which their brains and nerves had passed.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SITUATION.
The first thing to be done was to rest. Utterly exhausted, the lads dragged themselves a few feet from the water and threw themselves down upon the sand, thinking of nothing and caring for nothing except to lie still. The squall had passed away as quickly as it had come, and although a stiff breeze was still blowing the afternoon sun beating down upon them warmed as well as dried them rapidly. Jack Farnsworth was the first to recover his wits.
"I say, fellows, this won't do," he said, raising himself to a sitting posture. "The day is waning and we've got to get back to our camp before night."
Ned and Charley tried to rise. Ned accomplished the feat, but poor Charley found it impossible.
"Why, boys," he said, sinking back upon the sand, "I'm all of a tremble; I don't know what's the matter."