THE FOURTH CHAPTER
WRECKED!
WHEN I awoke I was very hazy in my head. The sky was blue and the sea was calm. At first I thought that I must have fallen asleep in the sun on the deck of the Curlew. And thinking that I would be late for my turn at the wheel, I tried to rise to my feet. I found I couldn’t; my arms were tied to something behind me with a piece of rope. By twisting my neck around I found this to be a mast, broken off short. Then I realized that I wasn’t sitting on a ship at all; I was only sitting on a piece of one. I began to feel uncomfortably scared. Screwing up my eyes, I searched the rim of the sea North, East, South and West: no land: no ships; nothing was in sight. I was alone in the ocean!
At last, little by little, my bruised head began to remember what had happened:
