Even as he spoke the whale-boat was lifted high in the air, poised for a moment like a bird in mid-flight, and then hurled forward amid a smother of foam and a roar of rushing waters. An instant later she struck with a crash that left her occupants bruised and breathless. There was no time, however, to consider bruises or aches, and almost with the shock itself they had gained their feet and leaped into water up to their knees.
Phil had grasped both shot-gun and rifle with the hope that he might save them from the wreck. Whether or not he was overbalanced by their weight he never knew; but with his first step into the water he slipped on the kelp-covered rocks, fell face downward, and would have been swept away by the outward rush of the sea had not the mate seized his collar. With a single movement of the sinewy arm Phil was lifted to his feet, and in another minute had been dragged beyond reach of the breakers that chafed and roared in impotent rage at this escape of the prey they had deemed so surely their own.
The next sea sprang upon the boat, rolled it over and over, bit at it with savage teeth, and finally tossed it, hopelessly shattered, at the feet of its recent occupants.
Serge could have cried at this wanton destruction of that upon which they had so much depended, while Phil was equally disconsolate over the loss of his guns. To Jalap Coombs, however, these successive disasters seemed only to lend an access of cheerfulness and activity. Rushing into the ravenous waters, he snatched from them the boat’s mast and sail, the long-handled gaff, a couple of oars, a coil of line, and some loose bits of rope.
“Don’t ye be cast down, lads!” he cried, cheerily, after this had been accomplished, and the three stood together on the beach. “We’ve more to be thankful for than to grieve over. We’ve lost our boat, to be sure; but it’s a marcy it brung us safe to shore as it did. There’s no use in crying over it now; for, as old Kite uster say, ‘What can’t be mended had best stay broke.’”
“But what are we going to do for a living now that our guns are gone?” asked Phil.
“Guns?” cried Mr. Coombs, contemptuously. “Ef we hadn’t nothing but guns to depend on in this world, I reckon there’d be a-many of us wouldn’t make no living. I know I wouldn’t, nor do I think Kite Roberson would have; for, good soul as he was, he never could a-bear the sight of a gun. Said his daddy uster lick him with a ramrod from the time he was broiling age till he run away to sea. What are we going to do for a living? Go fishing for one thing; develop the resources of this here island for another. When we’re tired of developing we can go into the fur business, and take to trading seal-skins. You’ve forgot the wealth we’ve got stowed away up yonder, haven’t ye, and that we come here a-purpose to look after?”
“Yes, I had,” answered Phil, soberly, “and I had forgotten our many other mercies as well. I had almost forgotten the miraculous preservation of our lives; but I shall remember, and be thankful for it from this time on.”
“We are fortunate to be cast away on this particular island,” broke in Serge, “for, from what I have heard, it has plenty of water, which some of them have not, plenty of food, such as it is, plenty of material for making a fire, plenty of old houses in which we can find shelter, and, above all, it is located right in the track of all vessels going into or out of Bering Sea, as well as up and down the coast.”
“If food, drink, fire, and shelter are awaiting us, let’s go to them, and not keep them waiting any longer,” cried Phil, “for I am hungry, thirsty, wet, cold, and tired, and if you two are not all of those things you ought to be.”