“What does he mean?” Larry asked of Martin, clinging to a brass stanchion to keep from being thrown into the scuppers as the little boat rolled heavily until the rail dipped the water.
“Why, just this,” Martin told him. “The real danger to us now is that we are so near the shore. Out in the open sea we could roll and tumble about and drift as far as we liked until the storm blew over. But here if we drift very far we will go smash against those rocks—and that would be the end of every one of us.”
“Well, if we went ashore why couldn’t we just jump and swim right to land a few feet away?” Larry asked, looking serious himself now, his blue eyes opening wide.
Martin’s little laugh was lost in the roar of the wind.
“That shows how much of a landlubber you are, Larry,” he said. “If you had been brought up near the ocean you would know that if this boat struck on this shore where all the coast is a lot of jagged rocks, it would be smashed into kindling wood. And no man can swim in the waves at the shore. They pick a man up like a cork; but they smash him down on those rocks like the hammer of the old Norse Sea god. That is why the sailor prays for the open sea.”
All this time Martin had been clinging to the rail with one hand, and trying to scan the shore line with his hunting glasses. But the blinding spray and the ceaseless rolling and pitching made it impossible for him to use them.
“But I’m not worrying about what may happen to this boat,” he shouted presently, putting the glasses in his pocket. “Either we will come out all right or else we won’t. And in any case we will have to grin and take what comes. What I’m worried about is Mr. Ware and the fellows in the boat with him. If they have started out from shore to come aboard before this gale hit us they are lost, sure. And I am certain they had started, for I caught a glimpse of the boat coming out of a cove fifteen minutes before the storm broke.”
For a minute Larry stared at the old man, comprehending the seriousness of the situation at last. “You mean then—” he asked, clutching the brass rail as the boat lurched forward,—“You mean that you think they will be drowned—really drowned, Martin?”
“That’s it, Larry,” Martin replied, seriously. “They haven’t one chance in a thousand, as I see it. Even if they could reach us we couldn’t get them aboard; and if they are blown ashore it will end everything. They haven’t a chance.”
As if to emphasize the seriousness of the situation the yacht just then dug her nose deep into the trough of a great wave, then rose, lifting her bowsprit high in the air like a rearing horse tugging at a restraining leash. It was a strain that tested every link of the anchor chain to its utmost. But for the moment it held.