Time and again they were swept from their feet and had to struggle desperately to regain the beach. The first one they pulled out was Dick, and, although more dead than alive, he immediately turned to and helped. Tom came next, still swimming feebly, but overwhelmed again and again by the breaking waves. There remained then only Bimbo, who could not swim, but was clinging desperately to a floating spar. As often as a wave washed him toward shore, the powerful undertow drew him out again, and he was fast weakening under the strain.
Under Benton’s directions they all joined hands, thus forming a living chain, and then battled their way into the surf once more. Phil was the outermost, and as the negro was swept shoreward on a big breaker, Phil stretched out a hand to him. The faithful darky just managed to grasp the outstretched hand as the undertow caught the spar and sucked it seaward. With a tremendous effort Benton, who was nearest the beach, exerted all his remaining strength, and they all staggered shoreward out of the inferno of breaking waves and clutching undertow. With a final desperate effort they shook themselves clear, and dropped, panting and exhausted, onto the wet sand of the beach.
For some time they lay scarcely able to move, but at length their strength began to return, and they struggled to their feet and took note of their surroundings.
Some hundred yards from the beach lay the wreck of their vessel. When it had struck the reef the mast had gone overboard, and the erstwhile trim ship was now a melancholy sight, with the waves breaking over her deck at short intervals. Fortunately, the outer reef broke the force of the rollers, so that the ship seemed in no immediate danger of smashing up, and they resolved to get as many of her stores as possible ashore as soon as the storm abated. But at present there was little they could do in that quarter, and they turned their attention to the island upon which they were stranded.
The beach was perhaps a hundred yards wide. At its landward edge were low sand hills covered with coarse grass, and beyond this rose the tall trees and tangled creepers of a dense jungle. Beyond this again the land rose steeply into a series of ridges, and as the little party gazed the same idea seemed to strike them all at the same time, and they looked at each other in startled wonder. Was it possible that an adverse Fate was relenting toward them?
Without a word Benton drew the old Spaniard’s map from the waterproof belt in which he always carried it, and they eagerly compared it with the jagged outlines before them. There were the same peaks before their eyes that the old pirate had seen and noted two hundred years before, and as they traced the unmistakable similarity the boys gave a shout of exultation. By what seemed little short of a miracle they had been cast upon Sawtooth Island!
But after their first feeling of exultation had passed, they realized that they would be as well off on any other island, unless, indeed, they could salvage some of their diving apparatus from the sunken vessel. Their immediate need was food and shelter, and without loss of time they set themselves to finding both. Thousands of clams and mussels had been thrown up on the beach, and they each gathered a quantity of these and ate them raw. Then, feeling much stronger, they set out to look for some kind of shelter from the heavy tropical rain that was still falling in torrents. There was obviously no shelter on the beach, so they approached the forest that hemmed it on three sides.
But when they reached the belt of dense vegetation, they were met by such a tangle of vines and undergrowth as defied penetration without the aid of knives and axes. They skirted slowly along the edge, looking for some opening, and at length Bimbo’s roving eyes detected the merest trace of a path through the trees.
“Dar’s a place we kin get in!” he shouted, and raced for the opening. But when he reached it he very prudently waited for the others to arrive before he ventured in.
They had to walk single file, and even at that it was slow going, as the path was encumbered by fallen trees, and great vines were festooned across it like ropes, and they had to duck under these to make any progress at all. They had almost decided to give it up for the present and return to the beach, when suddenly the path widened out into a small clearing, and they stopped to look about them.