I seated myself upon the sofa locker, and strove to recall mentally the features of the several rivers that we had visited, but could fit none of them to the dimly-seen surroundings that were visible from the port out of which I had looked.  The one thing which was certain was that we were in perfectly smooth water, and the entire absence of shock with which the ship had taken the ground was an indication that she was certainly in no immediate danger; but beyond that the situation was puzzling in the extreme.  The snug and sheltered position of the ship pointed strongly to the assumption that we had blundered into some river in the darkness; yet when I again looked out through the port the little that I was able to see was suggestive of beach rather than river, and that we were not very far from a beach was evidenced by the loud, unbroken roar of the surf.  Then there was the puzzling question: How did we get where we were?  What were the look-outs doing?  What was everybody doing that no one saw the land or heard the roar of the surf in time to avoid running the ship ashore?