Ah! was it upon them?
It all happened in a few seconds. In another it would be over. Revere closed his eyes.
At that instant a scream fraught with terrible agony broke upon the ears of the two men.
"The ship is falling!" cried Emily's voice, high-pitched, shrill with mortal terror. "Richard! What are you doing? Oh, God! Captain Barry, save him!"
"Would that she might have been spared this!" flashed into Revere's mind. He would have called to her had not something happened instantly.
The voice awakened the dormant reason in the old man's being. She loved this boy; perhaps he had told the truth.
"Save him! save him!"
The words rang in his ears. He had never disobeyed a command of hers. He would not now. Too late! There was a terrible grating sound; the last stanchion was grinding in its wooden shoe; it was sliding faster! In another moment the ship would be upon them! He had turned his head as the first cry had met his ear, and had seen in one swift glance Emily and another woman not a hundred feet away. Emily was bending forward, her hands outstretched, struggling. She would have run to them under the ship had not the other woman held her firmly, protectingly. Both girls were white as death.
Barry seized Revere by the collar and threw him violently far from him. The young man pitched downward and fell headlong on the grass in the direction of the two women. The ground sloped abruptly away toward the water on that side of the ship. In that same instant the sailor threw up two great arms and caught the impending ship. He took the place of the quivering, buckling, sliding oaken timber. For a second he stood there in mighty majesty, a pillar of strength and resolution, a tower of flesh and blood, sustaining a ship-of-the-line, a human stanchion, magnificent in the frenzied, awful expression of a power superhuman. Rigid, unbreakable, indomitable, he shored up the ship,—Atlas holding the world!
"Go!" he gasped.