"Will we ever weather this terrible storm?"It was a half-grown lad who flung this despairing question out; the wind carried the sound of his voice off over the billows; but there came no answer.A brigantine, battered by the tropical hurricane sweeping up from the Caribbean Sea, was staggering along like a wounded beast. Her masts had long since gone by the board, and upon the stump of the mizzen-stick a bit of canvas like a goose-wing had been spread in the useless endeavor to maintain steerageway.All around, the sea rose and fell in mountainous waves, on which the poor wreck tossed about, as helpless as a cork.Though the lad, lashed to some of the rigging that still clung to the temporary jury mast, strained his eyes to the utmost, he could see nothing but the waste of waves, the uplifting tops of which curled over, and were snatched away in flying spud by the furious wind.Darry was the cabin boy of the Falcon, having sailed with Captain Harley now for several years. The old navigator had run across him in a foreign port, and under most peculiar conditions.