Willy wished to make the effort with his little friend acting as interpreter and preacher, but scarcely had he and Peppo groped their way out of the cabin before they found themselves caught in a crowd of human beings, who screaming and howling at the top of their lungs, were making their way from the steerage into which the water was streaming.  The prow of the ship had struck the reef and was high above the water while great waves washed over the stern.  All were crowding up the narrow gangway and soon with three hundred Chinaman on deck there was not an inch of space not covered with water which was unoccupied.  In their fear of death they climbed what was left of the rigging and hung there like monkeys calling upon Buddha and all the heathen gods for help and giving utterance to wild, maniacal shrieks.  The boys would have been pushed overboard in this panic had it not been that they fell in with the Captain and helmsman who protected them as best they could.

“Tell your people,” cried Green to Peppo, “that there is no need of this frightful, insane howling.  We are so securely lodged that we cannot possibly sink, and the wreck will hold together until morning.  Five minutes ago when I saw that we were going to strike the reef, I wouldn’t have given a pipeful of tobacco for all our lives.”  And the Captain said to Willy in a more friendly manner than he had ever spoken:  “You prayed well, my little man.”

“Will the first officer also be good to me?” asked Willy, happy to receive a kind word.

“Hello, Redfox,” cried Green, “we quite forgot you in this mad scramble,” and the helmsman went to him and helped him along the deck.  “We are all in the same fix, and as Christians who pray ‘Our Father’ we should forgive and be brothers.  Here is my hand.”  The first officer refused the proffered hand, turning his back on the honest helmsman.

The night with its raging storm wore away; towards morning the moon showing itself in a rift in the clouds lighted the scene.  Scarcely two ships’ lengths away the sea thundered on the beach; farther out the waves, mountain-high, rolled in endless succession; to the right and left extended the reef like a wall, several meters above the water, except in one place it sank down so abruptly that even at low tide it was under water.

“Truly it is a marvel that we struck this reef just in this particular place, instead of there where it breaks off so abruptly,” said the Captain, “yet we are not in a fortunate position.  We have been saved from sudden death, but in its place we shall have a lingering and perhaps more agonizing one.  The ship is a total loss.  The provisions in the stern are under water, and the nearest port is a thousand miles away.”—­Today the great island of Bougainville, on the east coast of which the “St. George” stranded, belongs to Germany, and now it is not so difficult for those who meet with misfortunes at sea to reach a German harbor, but at the time of my story the nearest ports were those of Australia and New Caledonia.—­“How are three hundred Chinamen to live here for an indefinite length of time?”