“It was of no use, however,” continued the captain, acknowledging the interruption by an affirmative nod. “Do all we could, we could just hold our own; and very soon the main-topsail, on which I had placed my chief reliance, split and went to leeward. She fell off instantly, striking with force enough, one would have thought, to shiver her into atoms. The masts went overboard, and you know the rest. Poor thing!” he added, mournfully, apostrophizing the vessel, “she’s carried me across the Atlantic, this is now the tenth time, but she’ll never do it again. Ah!” he continued, with natural emotion, “I little fancied we’d part so.”
“It was just as the sail went to ribbons,” said Kate, after a pause, for she respected the feelings of the master too much to proceed at once, “that I came on deck. You said that, when day broke, succor perhaps might be found. But we may be some distance from land; for, if I recollect—I was born in New Jersey—there are bars far out at sea.”
“You are right,” answered the captain. “The shore, too, is but a sand-bank, all along that coast; and one separated, by miles of shallow lagoons, from the fast land. If we’ve struck anywhere below Squam, we’ll not be likely to get aid, even if the high tide has carried us over the outer bars and landed us right on the shore. Few, or none of the beaches, if I’ve heard rightly, are inhabited. But let us hope we’re nigher the Hook, for, in that case, we must be close in, and there are farmhouses and fishing-cabins there, in sight of the sea.”
He did not add, that, even if this should prove to be the case, it was extremely problematical whether assistance could be rendered to them, while the waves ran so high. His secret opinion was, that the chance of escape was the very slightest, for he had no faith in the ship’s timbers holding together till the gale subsided, even if they did till morning. But, brave as Kate was, he shrank from acquainting one so young, and who had every prospect of a happy life before her, that a speedy death was almost inevitable. Besides, he noticed the extreme terror of her aunt, who could, indeed, scarcely hold to her support, so unnerved was she by the peril of their situation.
For, even during this conversation, both the speakers had occasionally been almost carried from their feet. Nearly every surge swept more or less over the ship. Twice the master had to interpose to save Kate from being prostrated; and still more frequently his services were required in behalf of her aunt. Occupying a position between the two women, he was fortunately able to afford instant aid to either. Meantime, the storm showed no symptoms of subsiding. The rain still fell in sheets, often stinging the bare hands of the victims like hail. The wind shrieked as if the sea had temporarily given up its wicked dead, who gibbered as they rushed past in the gloom.
The seas also seemed to run still higher. They came trooping on, fast and thick as hungry wolves; rushed by with a howl that fairly appalled the listeners; or leaped and snarled about the ship, as if eager for their prey, and grudging every moment of delay. Now and then a roller, more colossal than its predecessors, would sweep the whole length of the deck, making a breach completely over the vessel, whose every timber quivered as if she was about to part.
The darkness, all this time, was palpable. Often it seemed as if the low sky and the upheaved waves were about to commingle above the doomed ship; and always, in looking seaward, the boundary line between the two was lost in a chaos of obscurity scarcely a hundred feet off.
CHAPTER IV.
MORNING
Environ’d with a wilderness of sea;
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,
Expecting ever when some envious surge
Will in his brinish bowels swallow him. —Shakespeare.
It is, methinks, a morning full of fate!
It riseth slowly, as her sullen car,
Had all the weight of sleep and death hung at it!
She is not rosy-fingered, but swollen black. —Jonson.