"Well, what's wrong?" asked my father.
"Can you see below the swivel, sir?"
A further examination showed that one of the cables, composed of 3/4-in. galvanized chain, had parted just below the swivel, while the yacht now only rode to the second anchor.
"We'll send a diver after it directly the swell has gone down," said the bos'n. "And look astern, sir; it's been touch and go."
Within a cable's length a ridge of jagged, teeth-like rocks showed in the trough of each gentle undulation. A mass of rock had been recently fired up from the bed of the lagoon, for previously its floor was remarkably free from obstructions, so that, had the remaining cable parted, the "Fortuna" would have been dashed to pieces on this new danger, and her crew, even had they escaped from this peril, would have been ground by the remorseless breakers against the shore of the island.
Some idea of the violence of the cyclone could be gathered from the fact that the huge tidal wave had swept the beach and broken against the grove of coco-nut palms, for the trunks of the trees, some of which had been uprooted, were covered with trailing masses of seaweed and the remains of the islanders' canoes.
As I looked on the scene of desolation, the strewn beach and the rocky pinnacles astern of us, and thence on the protecting masses of our newly formed island, I realized more fully to what extent we owed our safety to Providence, and, like the bos'n, I could express the situation in no other words than that "it's been touch and go with all of us."