"Wilbur clutched the rail as if he would tear it from its fastenings. 'A damned sight more, you blackguard; but I'll save it for the authorities!'
"'You feel no thanks for your escape—and there is nothing on your mind?'
"'Nothing but sleep—why should there be? Let's wind up this farce and get to anchor somewhere; I'm fagged out.'
"'No, we are going on,' said Lee Fu calmly, making no move to come into the wind. 'No time for rest, Captain; the journey is not done.'
"'Going on?' He turned fiercely, and for a moment he and Lee Fu gazed deep into each other's eyes in a grapple that gave no quarter.
"'Yes, Captain!' cried Lee Fu sharply. 'We have not yet reached the spot where the "Speedwell" met her doom. Now go! I cannot waste time in talk.'
"Since this experience, I've many times examined the charts of the region," Nichols went on. "But they don't begin to show it all. Beyond the middle island stretched a larger island, distant some five miles from the other; and between them lay the most intricate, extraordinary and terrible nest of reefs ever devised by the mind of the Maker and the hand of geologic change.
"The outlying fringe of reefs that had broken first approach ended at the middle island; beyond that to windward lay clear water, and the nest of reefs that I've mentioned received the full force of the wind and sea. Five miles of water stretched in mad confusion, a solid whiteness of spouting foam that seemed to hold a hideous illumination. Beyond the point of the middle island the long wind-swept rollers burst in tall columns of spray that shut off the view like a curtain as we drew near, where the rocks began in an unbroken wall.
"It was directly against this wall that Lee Fu was driving the sampan. The first lift of the outside swell had already caught us. I held my breath, as moment by moment we cut down the margin of safety. No use to interfere; perhaps he knew what he was doing; perhaps he actually had gone mad under the terrific strain. As he steered, he seemed to be watching intently for landmarks. Was it possible that he still knew his bearings, that there was a way through?
"Wilbur, at Lee Fu's command, had left us without a word. He stood at the rail, supporting himself by main strength, facing the frightful line of the approaching reefs; and on his back was written the desperate struggle he was having. It bent and twisted, sagging with sudden irresolution, writhing with stubborn obduracy, straightening and shaking itself at times in a wave of firmness and confidence, only to quail once more before the sight that met his eyes. He couldn't believe that Lee Fu would hold the course. 'Only another moment!' he kept crying to himself. 'Hold on a little longer!' Yet his will had been sapped by the long hours of the night and the terror of the dawn; and courage, which with him had rested only on the sands of ostentation, had crumbled long ago.