I Saw Three Ships | Page 4

nothing in comparison with it. But, at this instant, a small group of men and women joined them, and, catching sight of the faces of Sarah Ann Nanjulian and Modesty Prowse, her friends, she tried another tack--
"Well, Zeb, no doubt 'twas disappointing for you; but don't 'ee take on so. Think how much harder 'tis for the poor souls i' that ship."
This astute sentence, however, missed fire completely. Zeb answered it with a point-blank stare of bewilderment. The others took no notice of it whatever.
"Hav'ee seen her, Zeb?" called out his father.
"No."
"Nor I nuther. 'Reckon 'tis all over a'ready. I've a-heard afore now," he went on, turning his back to the wind the better to wink at the company, "that 'tis lucky for some folks Gauger Hocken hain't extra spry 'pon his pins. But 'tis a gift that cuts both ways. Be any gone round by Cove Head to look out?"
"Iss, a dozen or more. I saw 'em 'pon the road, a minute back, like emmets runnin'."
"'Twas very nice feelin', I must own--very nice indeed--of Gauger Hocken to warn the church-folk first; and him a man of no faith, as you may say. Hey? What's that? Dost see her, Zeb?"
For Zeb, with his right hand pressing down his cap, now suddenly flung his left out in the direction of Bradden Point. Men and women craned forward.
Below the distant promontory, a darker speck had started out of the medley of grey tones. In a moment it had doubled its size--had become a blur--then a shape. And at length, out of the leaden wrack, there emerged a small schooner, with tall, raking masts, flying straight towards them.
"Dear God!" muttered some one, while Ruby dug her finger-tips into Zeb's arm.
The schooner raced under bare poles, though a strip or two of canvas streamed out from her fore-yards. Yet she came with a rush like a greyhound's, heeling over the whitened water, close under the cliffs, and closer with every instant. A man, standing on any one of the points she cleared so narrowly, might have tossed a pebble on to her deck.
"Hey, friends, but she'll not weather Gaffer's Rock. By crum! if she does, they may drive her in 'pon the beach, yet!"
"What's the use, i' this sea? Besides, her steerin' gear's broke," answered Zeb, without moving his eyes.
This Gaffer's Rock was the extreme point of the opposite arm of the cove--a sharp tooth rising ten feet or more above high-water mark. As the little schooner came tearing abreast of it, a huge sea caught her broadside, and lifted as if to fling her high and dry. The men and women on the headland held their breath while she hung on its apex. Then she toppled and plunged across the mouth of the cove, quivering. She must have shaved the point by a foot.
"The Raney! the Raney!" shouted young Zeb, shaking off Ruby's clutch. "The Raney, or else--"
He did not finish his sentence, for the stress of the flying seconds choked down his words. Two possibilities they held, and each big with doom. Either the schooner must dash upon the Raney--a reef, barely covered at high water, barring entrance to the cove--or avoiding this, must be shattered on the black wall of rock under their very feet. The end of the little vessel was written--all but one word: and that must be added within a short half-minute.
Ruby saw this: it was plain for a child to read. She saw the curded tide, now at half-flood, boiling around the Raney; she saw the little craft swoop down on it, half buried in the seas through which she was being impelled; she saw distinctly one form, and one only, on the deck beside the helm--a form that flung up its hands as it shot by the smooth edge of the reef, a hand's-breadth off destruction. The hands were still lifted as it passed under the ledge where she stood.
It seemed, as she stood there shivering, covering her eyes, an age before the crash came, and the cry of those human souls in their extremity.
When at length she took her hands from her face the others were twenty yards away, and running fast.
CHAPTER II.
THE SECOND SHIP.
Fate, which had freakishly hurled a ship's crew out of the void upon this particular bit of coast, as freakishly preserved them.
The very excess of its fury worked this wonder. For the craft came in on a tall billow that flung her, as a sling might, clean against the cliff's face, crumpling the bowsprit like paper, sending the foremast over with a crash, and driving a jagged tooth of rock five feet into her ribs beside the breastbone. So, for a moment it left her, securely gripped and bumping her stern-post on the ledge beneath. As the next sea deluged her,