It was a low, sandy islet with a few stunted wind-blown palms at one end. At the other stood the lighthouse—a tall, thin tower painted in broad red and white bands alternately.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A SINGLE CHANCE.
The sea grew rougher as the wind freshened, just as Jack had feared it would. The little boat fairly flew along now, at times almost burying her lee gunwale. It was at such moments that Jack showed his skill as a sailor. One fraction of a mistake in his handling of the small craft and she would have keeled over a particle of an inch too far and filled up.
But with a closer view of the island a disconcerting fact was discovered. There appeared to be no place to land. The surf could be seen in great white clouds rising from the white beach, on which the big rollers crashed with a noise like thunder.
“How in the world are we going to land there?” Tom asked in dismay, gazing at the surf as it was tossed ten feet into the air. The thunder and roar of it could be plainly heard.
“We’d be smashed up in a second in those rollers,” declared Jack. “We must find some other landing place, that’s all.”
At the risk of swamping the boat, he headed her on a course that would carry them around the lighthouse end of the island. Flying along, half buried in foam, the little craft made good weather of it. But they now had a beam sea, and she was more difficult to manage.
Suddenly, from a small tin-roofed house that nestled under the tall lighthouse, a man came running at top speed. He had seen the boat and now shouted something, pointing to the other side of the island. Jack rightly guessed that he meant that there was a harbor on that side.
Hurling spray high over her, the little boat dashed around the end of the islet. On the other side the sea was just as high, but a sort of reef ran out at one point, behind which natural breakwater lay the harbor of which the lighthouse keeper had tried to tell them.