“Den get out of here. I know exactly what I’m doing. You’re just as safe as——”
But it came about that Captain Knutsen did not finish the sentence. McNab was never to find out, from Knutsen’s lips, just how safe he was. All at once he cried sharply in warning.
Before ever Knutsen heard that sharp cry, he knew what lay ahead. Dulled though his vision was, slow the processes of his brain, he saw that curious ridge of white foam in front,—an inoffensive-looking trail of white across their bows. At the same instant his keen ears caught a new sound, one that was only half-revealed in the roar and beat of the storm.
There was not the pause of an instant before his great, muscular arms made response. At the same instant Forest tried to apply the power of his engines in obedience to the sharp gong from above. And then both Knutsen and McNab braced themselves for the shock they knew would come.
The craft seemed to leap in the water, shuddered like a living thing, and the swath of the searchlight described a long arc into the sleet and the storm. It may have been that Knutsen shouted again—a meaningless sound that was lost quickly in the wind—but for seconds that seemed to drag into interminable centuries he sat absolutely without outward sign of motion. His great hands clutched his wheel, the muscles were set and bunched, but it was as if the man had died and was frozen rigid in an instant of incredible tension. His face utterly without expression, Forest crouched beside his engines.
There was nothing that either of them could do. The waves and wind were a power no man could stay. All their efforts were as useless as Knutsen’s shout; already the little ship was in the remorseless grasp of a great billow that was hurling her toward the ridge of white foam in front. For another instant she seemed to hang suspended, as if suddenly taken wing, and then there was a sheer drop, a sense of falling out of the world. A queer ripping, tearing sound, not loud at all, not half so terrifying as the bluster of the wind, reached them from the hold.
Cold sober, Knutsen turned in his place and gonged down certain orders to Forest. In scarcely a moment, it seemed, they were pulling the battens from the two little lifeboats on the deck.
XI
Knutsen’s brain was entirely clear and sure as he gave his orders on the deck. His hand was steady as iron. His failure to master himself had brought disaster, but he knew how to master a ship at a time like this. From the instant the Charon had struck the reef, he was the power upon that storm-swept deck, and whatever hope McNab had lay in him.
In the lantern light, blasted by the wind and in the midst of the surging waves, the scene had little semblance to reality. It was a mad dream from first to last, never to be clearly remembered by the survivors: a queer, confused jumble of vivid images that could never be straightened out. The head-light still threw its glare into the sleet-filled night. The biting, chill wind swept over the deck and into the darkness. The ship settled down like a leaden weight.