The Kip Brothers. Jules Verne

indeed, for at sea they would have searched in vain for a sail or lanterns of a ship. No vestige of the Wilhelmina remained. It had been lost, with all hands and all cargo. Nor was there any sight of the fateful steamer, which, more fortunate no doubt in having survived the collision, was now out of sight.

      Lifting himself up a bit, Karl Kip could perceive no debris of the hull or of the masts. The only surviving evidence was the chicken cage that they were clinging to.

      Exhausted and stiff, Pieter would have slipped into the deep if his brother had not kept his head above water. Vigorously now, Karl swam on, pushing the cage toward a barely perceptible reef, where the surf whitened its irregular line.

      This first fringe of the coral ring stretched out from the coast. It took a full hour to reach it. With the swell that swept them along, it would have been difficult to gain a footing. The shipwrecked men slipped through a narrow channel, and it was a little more than seven o’clock when they managed to pull themselves onto the outcropping of land where the dinghy from the James Cook had just rescued them.

      It was on that unknown, uninhabited island that the two brothers, barely clad, with no tools, no instruments, no utensils, were going to spend fifteen days of a most miserable existence.

      Such was the tale that Pieter Kip recounted, while his brother, listening in silence, confirmed it only with a nod.

      It was now known why the Wilhelmina, long awaited in Wellington, would never arrive, and why the French ship Assumption had not found a wreck along its way. The three-master lay in the depths of the sea, unless the currents had brought some debris further north.