No! not lost after all! The light emerged, and mounted, and mounted towards the ship.
It came near, and showed the black shiny body of Vespasian, with very little on but a handkerchief and a lantern—the former round his waist, and the latter lashed to his back: he arrived with a “Yah! yah!” and showed his white teeth in a grin.
Mrs. Beresford clutched his shoulder, and whimpered, “Oh, Mr. Black!”
“Iss, Missy, dis child bring good news. Cap'n! Massah Fullalove send you his congratulations, and the compliments of the season; and take the liberty to observe the tide am turn in twenty minutes.”
The good news thus quaintly announced caused an outburst of joy from Dodd, and, sailor-like, he insisted on all hands joining in a cheer. The shore re-echoed it directly. And this encouraged the forlorn band still more; to hear other hearts beating for them so near. Even the intervening waves could not quite annul the sustaining power of sympathy.
At this moment came the first faint streaks of welcome dawn, and revealed their situation more fully.
The vessel lay on the edge of a sandbank. She was clean in two, the stern lying somewhat higher than the stem. The sea rolled through her amidships six feet broad, frightful to look at, and made a clean breach over her forward, all except the bowsprit to the end of which the poor sailors were now discovered to be clinging. The afterpart of the poop was out of water, and in a corner of it the goat crouched like a rabbit: four dead bodies washed about beneath the party trembling in the mizen-top, and one had got jammed in the wheel, face uppermost and glared up at them, gazing terror-stricken down.
No sign of the tide turning yet, and much reason to fear it would turn too late for them and the poor fellows shivering on the bowsprit.
These fears were well founded.
A huge sea rolled in, and turned the forepart of the vessel half over, buried the bowsprit, and washed the men off into the breakers.