One morning just at the break of day Toko burst into my bedroom all out of breath and cried: “Oh, Mr. Milligan, _Doroty_ done loss! _Doroty_ done loss! I look him: he live for beach. I fear he never be good no more.” Before he had finished I had jumped out of bed, and in pajamas and bare feet was running to the beach where I discovered the _Dorothy_ nearly a mile down the beach, stranded and lying on her side. It was the worst part of the whole beach, full of rocks, a place where no one would think of beaching even a small boat. It was a mystery how she ever got there without breaking to pieces. There had been a violent tornado during the night and her cable had parted. Very fortunately she was first carried out to sea. A calm followed and the sea gradually became very quiet. With the turning tide she drifted towards the shore. By the time she was near the beach there was neither wind nor wave and she drifted with the current which of course was strongest where it was deepest and unimpeded by rocks. So she wound in and out, where no human pilot could have glided her, until she stranded. Then the tide receded before the wind again arose; else she would have pounded on the beach. When I found her she was high and dry. I could not tell how much damage she had received and wondered whether she would ever float again. It was a day of suspense as well as hard work. It took until three o’clock in the afternoon to get her straightened up and ready for the incoming tide to float her. I stayed there all day, having sent a boy to the house to fetch my breakfast and a pair of trousers. When the tide was low we carefully marked the channel; and when she floated we towed her until we were past the last rock and then I sprang to the engine, started her up and she was soon going full speed, nothing the worse for her visit ashore and evidently glad to get back to sea. It was a trying day. I was standing in water most of the time. But the suspense was the hardest of all. It is not easy to imagine all that the launch meant to me. Every part of my work depended upon it. I gathered the schoolboys from many towns, some of them far away, and at the end of term returned them to their homes. I visited regularly the various groups of Christians scattered in widely separated towns, and by means of the launch was preaching in all the towns on the Gaboon and its tributaries. Its loss would have undone my work. And besides, there was a sentimental attachment which I can hardly explain. In that prolonged exile, this commodious, and almost luxurious, launch represented civilization—fine buildings, libraries, music, hotels, porterhouse steak, ice-cream and so forth, besides friends, home and all that. Well, when the suspense was completely relieved and the _Dorothy_ was going at full speed back to her anchorage—but no one could understand who has not been an exile from home and civilization. [Illustration: CREW OF THE _DOROTHY_.