"Now, now!" cried the girl, breathless with terror, "strike for land anywhere—I know the shore. Only put me on dry land again—it's all I ask."
CHAPTER VIII.
OUT OF THE STORM.
Ben altered his course with a great effort, and forced a passage to the broken shore. He was too busy in preserving his boat from being dashed upon the rocks, to remark with what eager selfishness the girl left him, only uttering a quick ejaculation, and darting away without thanks. By the time he could look around she had plunged into a neighboring ravine, and he saw no more of her.
Though the current was running high, Ben had the whole force of the wind to urge him on, and his steady seamanship made the progress up stream less dangerous than the descent had been. But the toil was great and every muscle of his brawny arms rose to its full strain as he bent all his strength upon the oars. But with his greatest anxieties at rest, Ben cared little for this. With no life but his own at stake, the tempest was nothing to the brave man.
But it grew terrible. The boat was more than once hurled out of water. The waves dashed over him; the wind carried off his hat and beat fiercely against his head, sweeping the long hair over his face. Again and again the current wheeled his boat around, drifting it back with a force he could not resist, sometimes close to the shore, sometimes out in the torrent of waters. It was impossible now to see his course, except by the lightning. The entire darkness baffled him more than the storm.
Once when the boat was seized upon and hurled backward, Ben saw innumerable lights sweeping by in the fog between him and the shore, and he uttered a shout of wild thanksgiving that the steamer had not run him down. As the water heaved him to and fro, a glare of lightning revealed this monster boat, moving downward, and—oh, horror of horrors! Mabel Harrington, just as the vortex engulphed her. Two white arms were flung upward. Her hair streamed in the lightning. The deathly white face was turned shoreward.
The might of twenty men was in his arms then. He flung back the rushing waves with his oars, and from a will fiercer than his strength, forced his boat toward her. In a minute the darkness of death was around him. Blasts of wind and great gushes of rain swept over him. He shouted aloud. He beat the waters madly with his oars. He called upon God for one more flash of lightning.
It came. He saw a distant steamer, an up-turned boat and something darker than the foam heaving upon the waters.
"Hold on! Hold on!—I'm coming—I'm coming—it's Ben—it's Ben. Oh God, give me light!"