The clothes of the castaways were burned and their faces blistered and smudged. They must have fought the fire desperately till the last moment, when they found further effort useless.

“Ahoy, there!” shouted Mr. Brown cheerfully. “Don’t worry; we’ll soon get you!”

“We can wait a while longer,” came back a cheery voice.

It proceeded from a stout, good-natured looking man whose clothes were perhaps a trifle more disreputable than any of the others.

“I’m Wireless Willie,” he cheerfully explained, as he climbed on board. “This is a fine note, isn’t it? I’ve lost everything and came pretty near losing my mind. Do you blame me? She caught fire forward, and—Pouf!—up she went like kindling wood.”

The others clambered on board, one after another, and last came two seamen, who dragged a ragged, limp, smoke-blackened form from the raft and handed it to the mate in the boat.

For a moment Jack had a shock. He thought the man was dead. But a groan convinced him otherwise. At last all were on board.

“Now, bullies,” said Mr. Brown, addressing his crew, “it’s a long, hard pull back to the ship, but think of what you’re going to get when J. J. comes to!”

“Is Mr. Jukes on board?” asked Jack. “I thought maybe he was in another boat and cast adrift.”

“What, you didn’t know him?” demanded the mate, in genuine astonishment.

“No, I——”

“Well, that’s J. J., right there.”

He indicated the unconscious form to which some of the sailors were trying to administer nourishment.

“Yes, this is the owner, all of a heap,” volunteered one of them. “His heart’s gone back on him, I reckon.”

“Looks that way,” assented Mr. Brown, glancing at the recumbent form.

“But where is Tom?” cried Jack, the thought of the son of the magnate coming suddenly to him.

“Hush,” said one of the sailors from the Halcyon, “don’t talk too loud. He might hear you.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jack, staring at the man.

“The boy went off in one of the boats. We lost them in the fog. The good Lord only knows where they are now.”

“Drive the old man crazy when he hears of it, I reckon,” put in another man, the mate of the yacht. “He thought the world and all of Tom, he did.”

“As if I didn’t know that,” thought Jack; and then aloud to Mr. Brown:

“There’s another boat adrift, sir. Aren’t we going to look for it?”

Mr. Brown shook his head and pointed to the western horizon. The sun, like a big copper ball, was sinking.

“It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said. “But cheer up, they’ll be picked up somehow. You can depend on that.”

“I only hope so,” said Jack sadly.

He looked around at the empty sea. It made him shiver to think that somewhere on that desolate expanse was a boat full of castaways looking in vain for succor.