WILD LIFE ACROSS THE WORLD 



that neither the engineer nor the boy knew in which 

 direction to head. They could find their way in the 

 dayhght, but darkness rendered them helpless. 



I was convinced we were right off our course, and 

 endeavoured to make the boy understand where I 

 believed Kudat to be. Finally, he produced a very 

 ancient compass of the castor-oil pattern, but all the 

 card would do was to swing round and round, whilst 

 he tried wildly to follow it with the wheel. All this 

 time we were shipping water, which I attempted vainly 

 to bale out with my helmet, the only available thing 

 for the purpose. To make matters worse, the engineer 

 lost his nerve and began to yell hideously. 



Finding that the water was gaining on us fast, I 

 looked round to see if there was anything I could use 

 as a life-buoy when our craft finally sank, but dis- 

 covered nothing that would float ; so I resigned myself 

 as best I could to what seemed the inevitable, and 

 determined that if the crisis came I would simply 

 sink. I am a strong swimmer, and I was by no means 

 anxious to lose my life in that rather ignominious way, 

 but to have gone on struggling in the water would 

 have been merely to prolong the agony. 



Yet by some miracle the crisis never came, though 

 our escape was most certainly not due to the skill of 

 the crew. I could not get the wretched boy to under- 

 stand that by keeping the launch up to the wind we 

 should ship less water. Both he and his equally 



48 



