swallow it, but could not.

"It is no use," he said; "I am a dying man. Sitting in those wet clothes
in the boat has finished me."

And Augusta, looking at his face, could not but believe him.




CHAPTER IX.

AUGUSTA TO THE RESCUE.


After breakfast--that is, after Augusta had eaten some biscuit and a wing
that remained from the chickens she had managed to cook upon the previous
day--Bill and Johnnie, the two sailors, set to work, at her suggestion,
to fix up a long fragment of drift-wood on a point of rock, and to bind
it on to a flag that they happened to find in the locker of the boat.
There was not much chance of its being seen by anybody in that mist-laden
atmosphere, even if anybody came there to see it, of which there was
still less chance; still they did it as a sort of duty. By the time this
task was finished it was midday, and, for a wonder, there was little
wind, and the sun shone out brightly. On returning to the huts Augusta
got the blankets out to dry, and set the two sailors to roast some of the
eggs they had found on the previous day. This they did willingly enough,
for they were now quite sober, and very much ashamed of themselves.
Then, after giving Dick some more biscuit and four roasted eggs, which he
took to wonderfully, she went to Mr. Meeson, who was lying groaning in