"034 (B014) - The Fantastic Island (1935-12) - Ryerson Johnson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"Hard alee!" Monk squalled. "Engines reversed!"



The fantastic red light went out.



"Did you see?" Ham gasped in the silence that followed. "There must be two dozen ships, big and little, wrecked all around us."



"And the devil only knows where we are," Monk gulped. "I'm gonna back this boat, turn around, get outta here an' wait for daylight."



"A whole graveyard of wrecked ships," Pat gasped. "Red lightning that smells of sulphur!"



Pat's voice sounded, it seemed, rather cheerful.



"You always did like trouble, didn't you?" Monk grunted at her.



"And mystery," Pat added. "I eat it up."



There must have been a tide that carried the Seven Seas to one side, or something. They were in reverse, exactly retracing the course they had been sailing, when it happened.



A curling wave lifted the bow of the Seven Seas high in the water and hurled it down. The yacht shuddered with a wrenching shock that knocked Monk and Ham sprawling on the wet deck. There was a nightmare of grinding and scrapings as steel plates were wrenched from the hull by jagged coral.



Caught fast on the submerged reef, the craft did not rise with the next wave. She heeled half over instead, with a groaning of tortured steel; and the wave washed in an avalanche of water over the deck.



Ham and Monk were battered against the anchor winch. They staggered up, half drowned, to claw their way toward the bridge.