Bill felt tolerably secure where he was, yet he could not bear the thoughts of letting Tommy perish if he could help him; so, leaving his own piece of the wreck, he struck out towards his messmate. He fortunately had not many yards to go before he got up with Tommy.
“Hold on,” he said, “and I’ll tow your raft up to mine. I don’t want to run the risk of letting you catch me round the neck as you did the other day. But cheer up; I don’t think we’re going to die this time.”
With these encouraging words, Bill towed Tommy up to the piece of deck, which was amply large enough to support them both. Having got on it himself, he managed, though not without difficulty, to hand Tommy up also, and there together they clung to the ring-bolt.
“I wonder who else has escaped?” said Bill. “I’ll shout out. Listen if anybody answers.”
Even to Tommy, Bill found it necessary to speak very loud, on account of the roar of the breakers, which seemed even louder on that side of the reef than on the other.
“Anybody floating away there?” shouted Bill, his shrill voice being heard above the dull roar of the ocean. “Hark! I hear two or three voices replying,” said Bill. “Let’s give them a cheer, to keep up their spirits; perhaps they will come and join us here. I do hope Mr Collinson has escaped, and Jack Windy, and poor old Grim, and the other fellows too. Yes, I am nearly certain that is Jack’s voice.”
“Is there room for anybody else where you are?”
“Yes!” shouted Bill and Tommy. “Plenty for you, if you will come to us.”
In a short time Jack managed to swim up to the raft. It was very evident that it had been drifting still farther away from the reef. They helped Jack up as he reached the raft, considerably exhausted by his swim.
“We have got inside a lagoon,” he observed when he was seated on deck. “If it had not been for that, we should all have been dead by this time. But I have some hopes that others may have escaped. Look away down there to leeward. Can’t you see something rising up against the sky? They look to me like cocoa-nut trees, and I should not be surprised if there’s an island down there, and that, if we are in luck, we shall be landed on it before the night is over.”