"What do you mean to do?"
"I'm going straight through that dark space where the barrier is broken, and, if the way is clear, right into that harbor. Off to starboard there's a stretch of sand. I'll beach the ship there. It is high tide. We will go on easily. Then I will send a diver down and see what is to be done. Have you anything to suggest, Mr. Maynard?" he continued, turning to the owner.
"Nothing. The job is yours," answered Maynard.
"If I had a boat I'd send her in ahead to take soundings, but as it is we must depend upon ourselves. For'ard there," he shouted, "Mr. Gersey?"
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Let two of the best men take soundings with the hand leads."
By this time everybody on the yacht was on deck, except the castaways and their watchers. Two leadsmen on either side leaned far out from the ship and as she swept slowly through the somewhat narrow opening between the jagged jaws of the barrier on either hand, they began to heave their leads. The water shoaled rapidly, but not alarmingly. Indeed, bottom was the thing that Captain Weatherby wanted most of all to feel under his water-laden ship. The engines were stopped. The ship under its own momentum moved slowly across the lagoon into the smooth, still waters of the great cylindrical harbor. The deep silence was broken only by the rippling splash of the bow wave and by the long-drawn musical calls of the leadsmen in the chains. So she drifted through the entrance beyond the wall over which Beekman had so often clambered, and the whole wonderful harbor burst into view.
Beekman would not have known one side of it, for one side of it was gone. The rocks still rose as of old upon the other side. The heaven-kissing cliff where he had first seen Truda in the glory of the morning, still stood, and the unbroken rocks ran around the left hand, but the other side was changed. Where the brook had plunged over precipitous cliffs it now rolled down a long, easy slope, terribly broken, to be sure, but quite different from the mighty rampart of old.
The narrow beach whereon he had lain had somehow been lifted up and extended out at a very gentle angle far into the harbor. The eye of the captain took it all in. There was his resting place. His hand sought the Chadburn signal. The throb of the engines broke the silence. The man at the wheel put the helm to port. The sluggish yacht gathered additional way, swung heavily to starboard, and finally slipped through the shallow seas, glided up on the sloping sand, and came to a dead stop.
Providence had favored the sailor, as it often does and has done. The Stephanie was safe, exactly in the position in which her captain desired her to be. He turned to Mr. Maynard.