The Pirate Island

Book Excerpt: ...not be brought to bear upon it too suddenly. Old Bill, meanwhile, stood aft by the taffrail with the lead- line in his hand, anxiously noting the shoaling water as the smack drifted sternward toward the wreck."Hold on, for'ard," he shouted at last, when the little Seamew had driven so far in upon the sand that there was little more than a foot of water beneath her keel when she sank into the trough of the sea. "Now lay aft here, all hands, and let's see if we can get a rope aboard of 'em."The smack was now fairly among the breakers, which came thundering down upon the shoal with indescribable fury, boiling and foaming and tumbling round the little vessel in a perfect chaos of confusion, and falling on board her in such vast volumes that had everything not been securely battened down beforehand she must inevitably have been swamped in a few minutes. As for her crew, every man of them worked with the end of a line firmly lashed round his waist, so that in the extremely likely event of...