The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island | Page 7

away and the air became fairly stifling.
The captain looked anxious, and ordered the awnings taken down, and
told the boys that they had better go below.
Dr. Wise and the professors got the boys below, and none too soon, for
all of a sudden a funnel-shaped cloud appeared on the horizon, spread
with startling rapidity until it covered the entire heavens, and then from
it shot out a fierce flash of lightning, while the wind which had died out
now blew from an unexpected quarter with the greatest fury.
Being under their own steam they, of course, had no use for sails,
which would have been blown away.
For all that the waves dashed them ahead with great rapidity and the
propellers were now high out of water and now buried deep in the sea,
the yacht being almost unmanageable.
The wind was behind them, and there was no chance of going about in
such a blow and with such great waves dashing against them, so in

pitch darkness they sped on, no one knew where.
The electric lights in the cabin and the saloons were turned on so that
the boys were not in darkness, and some of the officers moved about
among them telling them that this was simply a squall, and would soon
blow itself out, and that there was nothing to be feared.
The howling of the gale, the creaking and straining of the shrouds, the
thumping and pounding and groaning of the machinery, and the
tramping of men overhead made a combination of sounds that might
well terrify anyone, and the older boys tried to reassure the younger
ones that it would be over in a short time, and that they would soon be
sailing on smooth seas again, and be laughing at their former terrors,
but it took a great deal of faith to make all this believed, and some of
those who urged it had very little confidence in its truth.
Herring, Merritt, and others of the same class were really terrified, and
took on dreadfully, predicting all sorts of dreadful things, and declared
that they were fools to have taken this voyage, and that they would
never undertake another.
Jack Sheldon, Dick Percival, Harry Dickson, and even mercurial Billy
Manners were quite different, however, and young Jesse W. Smith
acted like a man, and although he was frightened, as any one might be,
and no shame to him, did not give way to his fright, but said very
wisely that he guessed the storm had been gotten up for their especial
benefit so that they might know what sort of things they could do in
these latitudes.
How long they were rushing before wind and sea they did not know,
for it seemed ages, where they were going they could not guess either
as they had come from an unexpected quarter, and so suddenly that
they had not noticed its direction, and were not where they could look
at the compass.
All was bright and cheerful in the cabins, but through the portholes
they could see that all was dark outside with an occasional vivid flash
of lightning, these coming less and less frequent at length till they

ceased, and then the skies began to brighten.
Suddenly, however, before it was yet bright enough outside to make
out any objects, there was a sudden rush forward as if they had been
struck by a great wave, then a sudden upheaving as if they were
mounting to the sky, then another long rush forward, and then a shock
as if they had struck something, and for a few moments the lights went
out.
When they flared up again the vessel seemed to be at anchor, and the
boys said to each other:
"What is the matter, have we struck on a rock, are we sinking, what is
the matter anyhow?"
There was no confusion on deck, as there would have been if what the
boys feared had really happened, and presently one of the officers came
below and said reassuringly:
"Well, we are all right as far as I can see, but where we are is another
story. In some landlocked bay, apparently, but where it is or how we
reached it I can't tell."
"We were struck by a cyclone, weren't we, Officer?" asked young
Smith, with a wise air.
"That's just what it was, and when those things strike you they strike
hard. Lucky for us that we happened to be going ahead of it, for if we
had been head on to it we might not have survived."
"But there is no danger, we have not struck a rock or anything, we have
no holes in our hull?"
"None that we can see. We are beached somewhere, and we may slide