"Every ship outside Balaclava is in the same stress as ourselves. They could spare us no help, even if we asked for it."
"What, then, are we to do?—in Heaven's name!"
"Trust in Providence and hope for the best! But I think—if I might suggest—it would be as well to keep the general in ignorance of our condition, which is not so very desperate after all."
"How do you mean?"
"'Our cables are stout,' Captain Trejago says, and we ought to be able to ride out the storm."
And the Arcadia did so gallantly all that day, in the teeth of the hurricane, which blew with unabated fury for many more hours, and in spite of the tempest-torn sea, which now ran mountains high.
All through that anxious day Trejago kept the deck, watching the sky and the storm. It was late in the afternoon when he said, with a sigh of relief—
"The wind is hauling round to the westward; I expect the gale will abate before long."
He was right, although to eyes less keen there was small comfort yet in the signs of the weather.
It was an awful scene—ships everywhere in distress: some on the point of foundering, others being dashed to pieces on the rocks. The great waves, as they raged past in fearful haste, bore upon their foaming crests great masses of wreck, the dread vestiges of terrible disasters. Amongst the floating timbers and spars, encumbered with tangles of cordage, floated great bundles of hay, the lost cargo of heavily-laden transports that had gone down.