“What’s that yonder?” Johnny asked.
“A boat! A boat on the beach!” Doris exclaimed. “Hurray! We will tip it over and make a shelter of it.”
“I wonder if we will ever see him again,” she said to herself as, on reaching the beach, she paused for breath. She was thinking of the monkey with the jeweled arm.
The next instant a blinding flash of lightning and a crash of thunder sent her flying toward the boat, that seen from the level now seemed much larger and very far away.
“We’ll never make it,” she panted sobbingly. “We’ll be half drowned.”
CHAPTER X
STOWAWAYS
That the boat they had sighted was a large one, far too large to be tipped on its side they learned soon enough; not, however, until they had become utterly exhausted by their mad race with the storm.
And such a storm as it promised to be. The sky was inky black. The mountains, the nearby hills, even the cocoanut groves were blotted out. The sea, a sheet black as iron lay so still it appeared that one might walk upon it.
“Cou—couldn’t turn it over. If it—it was only a bark canoe! And look!” Doris panted. “It’s a young ship.”
It was indeed. The craft they had taken for a row-boat was a square masted schooner, with mast thrown carelessly over the side.