The night wore on; no signs of the boat; and now there was a heavy gale outside, and a great sea rolling in, brown and foaming.
Day broke, and showed the sea for a mile or two; the rest was hidden by driving rain.
Helen kneeled on the shore and prayed for him.
Dire misgivings oppressed her. And soon these were heightened to terror; for the sea began to disgorge things of a kind that had never come ashore before. A great ship's mast came tossing. Huge as it was, the waves handled it like a toy.
Then came a barrel; then a broken spar. These were but the forerunners of more fearful havoc.
The sea became strewed and literally blackened with fragments; part wreck, part cargo, of a broken vessel.
But what was all this compared with the horror that followed?
A black object caught her eye; driven in upon the crest of a wave.
She looked, with her hair flying straight back, and her eyes almost starting from her head.
It was a boat, bottom up; driven on, and tossed like a cork.