Presently, I heard the sound again; there could be no mistake about it. There was the hollow boom of great seas breaking over banks of sand. I started up, and swung myself on the ledge of the bulwarks. Not a quarter of a mile on our weather bow I could see a great bed of tumbling spray, which gleamed with a pale lustre in the dark. ‘Breakers on the weather bow!’ I shouted. ‘Up, men, up! Keep her away, Tom, keep her away. Call all hands!—stand by sheets and brails—see all clear with the anchor.’ In a moment the deck of the schooner was alive with startled men, I leaped forward, and flung myself on the bowspirit. ‘Breakers right a-head!’ I screamed ‘Up with the helm—hard up.’ ‘Breakers on the lee bow!’ sung out two or three voices at once. We were embayed. The white water tumbled and roared all around us: I thought all was over, when right a-head I saw a space of dark sea. This might be our salvation. ‘Hold your luff!’ I shouted—‘hold your luff! but keep her well in hand. So—steady.’ ‘Steady!’ replied Bristol Tom, and the schooner shot through a narrow channel—so narrow that the drifting foam of a great surge upon our weather bow flew over us in a salt shower. By this time the whole crew had tumbled out of their hammocks, and rushed upon deck half awake, and calling out to know what was the matter? ‘Down with your helm—hard down!’ I cried again. The schooner swept up into the wind, and a great mass of foam seemed as it were to glide from beneath her bows. ‘Breakers a-head!’ sung out Nicky Hamstring’s voice as the direction of the ship was altered. ‘Keep her away again,’ cried Captain Jem and myself together. The bows of the manageable little vessel receded fast from the wind, when she sunk in the trough of the tumbling swell, with a jerk and a jar which appeared to shake her very ribs. ‘She has struck!’ cried half the crew at once. But the next sea hove the ship buoyantly aloft; the wind came down with a heavy puff; she bent over before its influence, and for near five minutes rushed madly on amid the broken water which flashed and glanced upon either side of us; now, by a sudden twitch of the rudder, and a rapid jibbing of the sails, avoiding a reef, or spit of sand which lay directly across her course—anon, running along a belt of white water, until, mayhap, a sudden bend of the reef caused us to whirl the schooner right into the wind’s eye again, and try to beat slowly up the tortuous channels, expecting every moment to be flung with a crash upon a ledge of coral rocks. All this time the men were working to clear the anchor, and just as the schooner was hove into the wind to weather the corner of a long shallow point of breakers, our moorings were let go, our sails sharply brailed up, and we had soon the satisfaction of finding that we rode easily to our anchor in about eight fathom water, with a great labyrinth of sand-banks and low ledges of rock around.