It was evident that the sailors had lost all control of the little craft, which fairly leaped in the water with a desperate strain, as if mad to escape from its howling enemies. Suddenly the wind took it on the crest of a wave, whirled it sheer about, and drove it on with fury towards the point where Parris and his young companion stood.
A chain of sunken rocks girded the shore in that place, breaking up the waves into innumerable whirlpools, and sending sheets of foam back upon the storm. It scarcely seemed a minute when the boat made a plunge into the midst of this terrible danger, and for an instant lay still, with the angry foam boiling around it, and the white faces of its occupants in full view. One man held the stump of a broken oar in his grasp, and with its splintered end beat against the waves, as if this frantic exertion would do them good. Another had lost his oar, and sat with his arms folded, calmly surveying the land, with his wild eyes sternly measuring the danger before him. Two other men toiled on with the strength of giants, but the oars were no better than rushes in their hands, and all their strength scarcely more than the flutter of dead tree boughs against a wind like that.
All this the two men upon the shore took in at a glance. Then the female, who had fallen forward upon her knees in the stern, absorbed their whole attention. The face was turned that way, white and contracted. Her hands were clasped and flung out with imploring anguish. Her eyes gleamed, her frame quivered and rocked to and fro. The winds had torn the bonnet from her head, and the waters dashing over the boat saturated her crimson mantle till it hung heavily around her, and turned purple under the scattered coils of her hair.
The boat gave a lurch: she started up, her white lips parted as if uttering desperate cries; but if any escaped her they were swallowed by the storm. Still their terrible eloquence broke forth in one wild gesture, as she flung her locked hands upwards, and sunk down again, shuddering and cowering into the bottom of the boat.
"She cannot live! she is lost!" cried the young man upon the beach, frantic almost as the woman in her peril. "Is there no rope, no help, nothing?"
"There is a God above," answered Parris, who stood with his gleaming eyes fixed upon the boat.
The youth dashed out his arms against the wind, maddened by these heavy words. Then, with a sudden cry, he darted forward and seized upon the old man's cloak.
"Give it me—give it me!" he cried, rending it from the minister's shoulders. "God expects his creatures to work when he sends danger—knot these strips together if you would not see all those souls perish before our eyes. Work, old man! Save that woman, and I, too, will kneel down anywhere and give thanks to God honestly as you. Tie them firmly, and tighten the knots with hand and foot—see—as I do."
While he spoke, the youth tore the old man's cloak into long strips, using his delicate hands and white teeth simultaneously in the work; to these he added his own short cloak, rent into fragments with equal impetuosity.
The old man obeyed him, and began to knot the fragments together, while the youth pressed his foot upon each knot, drew it firmly, and proceeded to the next. A cable of some length was thus produced, which he tied around his waist, while he flung the other end to the minister, who, fired with sudden energy, followed the directions given him in stern silence.