There were nights, now, and the black sea and sky made this one a memory that divides as with a sable curtain all that went before it from all that followed after.
Once there came a heavy jar as our keel struck and grated over some hidden reef. We had no means of knowing where we were, and even had we known, the knowledge would have availed us little in these uncharted seas.
Suddenly, in the electric glow of our searchlight, there rose straight before us a black wall that was not the penetrable night. A great wave just then lifted us and bore us forward. An instant later there came a jar that threw us from our feet, and then the stanch old Billowcrest no longer tossed and pitched and battled, but lay rocking helplessly, as though wounded to the life.
There came first a quick order to lower the boats. Then another to hold them in readiness, but not to launch until the vessel gave signs of breaking up. It was better to remain where we were, as long as we could—to wait for daylight, if possible. Examined below, the Billowcrest showed as yet no opening, and seemed to be lying easily.
Morning dawned at last on a gray, desolate shore, with a sea as gray and desolate, between. But the King of Storms, satisfied, perhaps, that he had stranded us on a desert island, had gone his way.
Chauncey Gale came on deck presently with Edith, still pale and ill, but more animated than she had been for days. With Captain Biffer I had come out early to view the shore.
“Well, Biff,” greeted Gale, “you seem to have got us anchored some place at last. Don’t look much like the last place we stopped, but I s’pose it’s all in a day’s work. What do you call it?”
“One of the South Shetlands, I should say. I don’t know which.”
“How’s the ship? Any holes in her yet?”
“No, and she ain’t grinding any that I can hear. But she’s aground good and hard. She seems to be on a flat surface—mebbe sand. The sea’s running down, too, and I shouldn’t wonder if we were left high and dry before long.”