Fiction > Book editions > London, 1886 - Kidnapped

I   TALK   WITH   ALAN   IN   THE   WOOD.               175
condemned to wander in with my companion. Partly as
we so sat, and partly afterwards, on the way to Au-
charn, each of us narrated his adventures; and I shall
here set down so much of Alan's as seems either curious
or needful.
It appears he ran to the bulwarks as soon as the
wave was passed ; saw me, and lost me, and saw me
again, as I tumbled in the roost; and at last had one
glimpse of me clinging on the yard. It was this that
put him in some hope I would maybe get to land after
all, and made him leave those clues and messages which
had brought me (for my sins) to that unlucky country
of Appin.
In the meanwhile, those still on the brig had got
the skiff launched, and one or two were on board of her
already, when there came a second wave greater than
the first, and heaved the brig out of her place, and would
certainly have sent her to the bottom, had she not struck
and caught on some projection of the reef. When she
had struck first, it had been bows-on, so that the stern
had hitherto been lowest. But now her stern was
thrown in the air, and the bows plunged under the sea;
and with that, the water began to pour into the fore-
scuttle like the pouring of a mill-dam.
It took the colour out of Alan's face, even to tell
what followed. For there were still two men lying
impotent in their bunks; and these, seeing the water
pour in and thinking the ship had foundered, begun to
cry out aloud, and that with such harrowing cries that