“Oh, it’s a collision!” cried Bunny.
Mrs. Brown looked at her husband.
“Has anything happened?” she asked.
“I’m afraid so,” he answered. “We certainly struck something, and we have stopped. But we didn’t strike very hard.”
There were confused shoutings and calls throughout the ship, and then some one exclaimed:
“We’re fast aground! We’ve run on a sand-bar or on some island!”
CHAPTER XV
GOING ASHORE
Mrs. Brown, hearing some one say that the ship was aground, was not as worried as she was when she thought that the Beacon was in a collision.
“If we’re aground, we can go ashore and be safe and not have to drift around in small boats,” said Mrs. Brown to her husband.
“We can if the island or the sand-bar that we have struck on is high enough out of water,” said the children’s father. “But sometimes these islands or bars are below the surface, in which case we naturally couldn’t land on it. But I don’t believe we shall have to go ashore. The ship struck so easily that I think we may soon be able to pull off again. I’ll go to the captain and see if I can find out what the matter is.”