"Don't be afraid," he exclaimed, "the gal is all right. That waxy look, I'm sartin, ain't from death. She'll git over it! I never saw one of the female sect in this siterwation afore, except once off the Cape of Good Hope where I was wrecked in the bark Tempest. The poor creatur' was in the water tied to the bottom of a boat a whole day, but the water bein' warm, as it is here, she got over her hardship, and I believe is now livin' parfectly healthy with a famerly of small children."
"It seems to me, Turk," said Harry, suddenly, "that we are receding from the volcanic inland; instead of approaching it."
"I was a-thinkin' of that same," answered Turk; "in fact the wind has hauled round a little, and is now a-blowin' from the island, instead of towards it."
This troubled the young man much. He now had little hope, in fact, of Mary's being saved.
Meanwhile, through the din of the storm, the voices of Turk's shipmates were now and then heard, as they drifted along, attached to their respective spars.
With the strange coolness of seamen in the most perilous situations, many of these men even ventured so far as to laugh and crack jokes as they were tossed about on that stormy ocean; so true it is that "Jack never despairs while there is a plank under him."
Gradually the voices became more detached as the poor fellows were separated further and further from each other by the intervening seas, perhaps never again to meet on earth!
Mary Manton now opened her eyes. The plank to which she was attached had by this time drifted out of range of the stream of light, but Harry and Turk could see the gleam of those bright orbs through the darkness.
"Why! where am I? Harry! Harry! where are you?" exclaimed the poor girl, while shudder after shudder convulsed her frame.
"I am here, Mary!" he answered. "Cheer up! You are with friends. We may, in time, succeed in reaching land."