“You say the door’s immovable?” the scientist questioned.
“Hopelessly!” returned the baronet; “but we can smash the glass if we wish to get out.”
“I reckon there’ll be no call to smash the glass,” Silas said; “another ten minutes and the hull outfit’ll be bust.”
He pointed ahead as he spoke.
Scarce a mile away, looming nearer each moment, a terrible line of cliffs rose black and beetling from the water’s edge; and above, veiling their summits, hung a threatening black smoke cloud, from somewhere in the heart of which came the rumbling explosions they had heard at frequent intervals since their entry into this sea.
The speed of the Seal increased as the moments flew by, until her pace could not have been less than forty knots an hour, and that without any aid from her engines.
“This is terrible!” muttered Mervyn. “Have we escaped one peril, only to be dashed to pieces against those cliffs?”
He was pale to the lips, and his hands shook as with an ague; the nearness of that terrible wall, upon which the Seal was rushing so blindly, unmanned him. He turned to his comrades.
“I’m afraid the old boat’s doomed,” he murmured brokenly; “she will go to pieces like matchwood against that barrier. I am sorry that our trip will have so disastrous an ending——”
“Say,” the Yankee interrupted, “don’t you be too previous, Mervyn. I guess we ain’t done yet, by a considerable piece. If I ain’t dreamin’, there’s a gap in the darned barrier, and the old Seal’s a-shovin’ her nose straight towards it.”