The fact was that Uncle Henry had gone to lie down in his little
sleeping-berth, but Dorothy did not know that. She only remembered
that Aunt Em had cautioned her to take good care of her uncle, so at
once she decided to go on deck and find him, in spite of the fact that
the tempest was now worse than ever, and the ship was plunging in a
really dreadful manner. Indeed, the little girl found it was as much
as she could do to mount the stairs to the deck, and as soon as she
got there the wind struck her so fiercely that it almost tore away the
skirts of her dress. Yet Dorothy felt a sort of joyous excitement in
defying the storm, and while she held fast to the railing she peered
around through the gloom and thought she saw the dim form of a man
clinging to a mast not far away from her. This might be her uncle, so
she called as loudly as she could:

"Uncle Henry! Uncle Henry!"

But the wind screeched and howled so madly that she scarce heard
her own voice, and the man certainly failed to hear her, for he
did not move.

Dorothy decided she must go to him; so she made a dash forward, during
a lull in the storm, to where a big square chicken-coop had been
lashed to the deck with ropes. She reached this place in safety, but
no sooner had she seized fast hold of the slats of the big box in
which the chickens were kept than the wind, as if enraged because the
little girl dared to resist its power, suddenly redoubled its fury.
With a scream like that of an angry giant it tore away the ropes that
held the coop and lifted it high into the air, with Dorothy still
clinging to the slats. Around and over it whirled, this way and that,
and a few moments later the chicken-coop dropped far away into the