But after an hour he felt considerably better and went off to sleep.  By that time it was early morning and they could see about them.  The rain had almost ceased, but the wind still blew hard and the surf was still pounding.  Once during the darkness the waves had, from the sound, entirely covered the little beach.  Now, however, they had receded and, as the light grew, they saw that the Adventurer lay, with regard to the tide, about as they had last glimpsed her.  But she had swung her stern further around, in spite of the anchor Steve had dropped, and the waves were breaking almost squarely across her.  She was a pathetic sight.  Her side curtains were waving in ribands, the forward flag-pole held nothing but one tiny rag of blue bunting and the tender, torn from the chocks, was jammed between the stanchions ahead.

“But she’s still whole,” said Steve from between blue lips.  “And the storm’s going down.  If she isn’t sprung too much, and we could only get her off of there—­”

“Getting her off,” said Joe with a pessimism born of hunger and cold and the gloom of the early morning, “will be about as easy as moving a house with a toothpick.  I dare say the sand’s bedded around her two feet high.”

“I’m afraid so,” Steve agreed.  “Well, let’s have something to eat.  Will you have steak or chicken, Joe?”

“Broiled ham and a baked potato, please, and a couple of eggs.  Not more than two minutes for the eggs.  And you might bring me a couple of hot biscuits—­”

“Oh, shut up,” begged Steve miserably.

“Well, you started it!  Who’s awake here?”

“I am,” muttered Perry.  “Seems to me I haven’t been anything but awake for ten years.”

“Well, want to order your breakfast now, or will you wait?” asked Joe cheerfully.

“Guess I’ll wait,” answered Perry grimly.  “Where are those crackers?”

They got Ossie awake with difficulty and Steve doled out six crackers to each.  The tin cup came in handy, for there was a pool of rain water in a ledge below them.

“What I can’t see,” grumbled Ossie, “is why we didn’t stay on board the boat.  It would have been a lot drier than this place.”

“You may think so now,” replied Steve, “but wait till you get aboard again.  We might have stayed on her, as it’s turned out, but the boat didn’t look very homelike to me yesterday!”

“How the dickens were we to know that it would hold together, or even stay on its keel?” asked Joe disgustedly.  “Don’t talk like a sick goldfish, Ossie!”

As soon as they had consumed breakfast they scrambled down to the beach with many groans and stretched their cramped and aching limbs.  The rain, although now little more than a very heavy mist, limited their vision to a hundred yards or so in any direction.  Steve hazarded the opinion that they were not more than two miles from the mainland, although he made no attempt to give a name to the island they were on.  The fate of the Follow Me worried them all, but Phil, always the most sanguine in times of stress, pointed out that as the other craft had not followed them onto the island she was probably safe.