At this the captain rushed to where Kate was standing.
“Don’t go,” he cried, eagerly. “They’ll all be drowned. No boat can live five minutes.”
Kate hesitated. She was inexperienced, and knew not what to do. On the one hand it seemed inconceivable that so many persons would rush to what they ought to be aware would be certain destruction. On the other, the tone of absolute conviction in which the captain spoke, added to the high opinion she had formed of his seamanship and good judgment, inclined her to follow the advice.
“Quick!” cried the speaker from the boat, while other voices murmured impatiently.
She still hesitated, though her aunt pulled her arm, as if to go. Any further decision, however, was not permitted to her, for, the next instant, another voice from the boat cried, sharply—
“We can’t wait all night; push off, push off.”
Other voices, almost simultaneously, seconded this impatient cry, and the boat, on the instant, sunk away from the side of the ship, to be seen, the moment after, rising on a wave a good pistol-shot distant.
“Madmen!” muttered the captain between his teeth.
He had scarcely spoken, when a gigantic roller overtook the boat, still dimly visible as she floated broadside on, for in the haste and confusion of putting off all the men had not yet got out their oars, and consequently her head had not been pulled around.
A cry from the captain, and a stifled shriek from Kate burst forth, for the wave, rising like a moving hill, was now seen overtopping the boat for one brief moment, while a crowd of horror-struck countenances, whose looks Kate never forgot to her dying day, gazed up at it from below; and then, with a roar as of a hungry lion descending upon its prey, the enormous billow plunged headlong upon the miserable wretches. In that roar were mingled shrieks such as made the blood of the listeners curdle, the last wild cries, and the agonizing prayers of dying men. A whirlpool of foam was all that could be seen at first, after the boat had disappeared, out soon an oar floated to the surface, then a hat, then a struggling figure or two, and then faces upturned wildly in the death-struggle. But the next surge that swept over the spot carried them under again, or bore them out of sight into the gloom ahead.