When he reached the deck the explanation was quickly apparent. The boat was wedged hard and fast in a crevice of rock, her deck several feet above the water, and just below the level of the rocky cliff of the shore. She had been picked up bodily by the tremendous comber and flung against the cliff, and luckily for them, had been jammed into a crevice that prevented her slipping back into the ocean and sinking. For her bottom and her port side were stove in, and she was completely wrecked.
For a few minutes the boy stood gazing in mute astonishment. Old Martin also stood silently looking about him. Then he offered an explanation.
“’Tisn’t anything short of a miracle, I should say,” he explained to Larry. “I have heard of some such things happening, but I never believed that they did really. You see the waves just washed everything overboard—captain, crew, masts, everything—except you and me, and the two dogs. It washed me just as it did you, but I went down the after hatchway by luck, and I hung on down there in the companionway until the thing struck. But all the time that the waves were washing over us we were being driven along toward this ledge of rock full tilt. And when we were flung against this rock we should by good rights, have been battered to kindling wood at one blow, and then have slipped back into the water and sunk.
“But right here is the curious part of it all. Just as she got to the foot of this cliff, an unusually big comber must have caught her, raised her up in its arms fifteen or twenty feet higher than the usual wave would have done, and just chucked her up on the side of this bluff out o’ harm’s way—at least for the time being. The sharp edge of the ledge happened to be such a shape that it held her in place like the barb of a fish-hook. And all that the smaller waves could do was to pound away at the lower side of her, without hurting her enough to make her fall to pieces.
“But of course they’ll get her after a while—almost any hour for that matter; for this storm is a long way from being blown out yet, I’m afraid. And so it’s up to us to just get as much food and other things unloaded and up away from this shore line as fast as we can. Most of the stores are forward, and that is where she is stove in the least.
“I suppose we’ve got to take off five minutes and cram a little cold food into ourselves, so that we can work faster and longer. For we surely have got to work for our lives to-day. If this boat should suddenly take it into her head to slide off into the ocean again, as she may do at any minute, we’re goners, even if we are left on shore, unless we get a winter’s supply unloaded and stored on the rocks. For we are a long way from civilization, I can tell you.”
With that Martin rushed Larry to the galley, dug out some bread, cold meat, and a can of condensed milk. And, grudging every minute’s delay, they stood among the wreckage of the once beautiful cabin, cramming down their cold breakfast as hastily as possible. In the excitement Larry forgot his bruises and sore spots.
As soon as they had finished Martin hurried the boy to the forward store-room door, bursting it open with a heavy piece of iron.
“Now pick up anything that you can handle,” he instructed, “run with it up on deck, and throw it on to the bank. I’ll take the heavier things. But work as hard and as fast as you can, for our lives depend upon it.”
For the next two hours they worked with furious energy rushing back and forth from the store-rooms, staggering up the tilted steps to the deck, and hurling the boxes across the few feet that separated the boat from the ledge. Every few minutes Martin would leap across the gap, and hastily toss the boxes that had been landed further up on the shore, to get them out of the way for others that were to follow.