"But only look down the inlet!" said Donovan. "How wild it seems! See those lines of foam! Hark!"
A rushing noise as of some great river foaming among bowlders began to be heard.
"It's the tide coming in!" shouted the captain, starting to run down the rocks.
The schooner had swung back and round the other way. What we had read of the high and violent tides in these straits flashed into my mind.
The captain was making a bee-line for the vessel: the rest of us followed as fast as we could run. Just what good we any of us expected to be able to do was not very clear. But "The Curlew" was our all: we couldn't see it endangered without rushing to the rescue. Panting, we arrived on the ledges overlooking the boat and the schooner. The tide had already risen ten or a dozen feet. The boat had floated up from the rock, and broken loose from the line. We could see it tossing and whirling half way out to the schooner. The whole inlet boiled like a pot, and roared like a mill-race. Huge eddies as large as a ten-pail kettle came whirling in under the cliffs. The whole bay was filling up. The waters crept rapidly up the rocks. But our eyes were riveted on the schooner. She rocked; she wriggled like a weather-cock; then swung clean round her anchor.
"If it will only hold her!" groaned Capt. Mazard. "But, if it drags, she'll strike!"
Old Trull, Weymouth, and Bonney were at the windlass, easing out the cable as the vessel rose on the tide. Corliss was at the wheel, tugging and turning,—to what purpose was not very evident. But they were doing their level best to save the vessel: that was plain. Capt. Mazard stood with clinched hands watching them, every muscle and nerve tense as wire.
I was hoping the most dangerous crisis had passed, when a tremendous noise, like a thunder-peal low down to the earth, burst from the ice-jammed arm of the inlet to the north-east. We turned instantly in that direction. The whole pack of ice, filling the arm for near a half-mile, was in motion, grating and grinding together. From where we stood, the noise more resembled heavy, near thunder than anything else I can compare it with.
"It's the tide bursting round from the north-east side!" exclaimed Kit.
"Took it a little longer to come in among the islands on the north side," said Raed, gazing intently at the fearful spectacle.