And sitting there he could hear the mighty waves sweep over the deck with a fierce impetuosity that it seemed must rend the vessel asunder.
“How much longer, oh heaven! can this tortured vessel stand this?” he exclaimed, more than once, as it labored up from the trough of the sea.
CHAPTER XVIII.
WAITING FOR THE END.
The terrible night wore slowly away. If the sloop Albatross was unseaworthy she still struggled manfully and bravely with the furious tempest. It seemed at times as if human ingenuity could not put timbers together strong enough to withstand the avalanche-like pounding of the mountain surges; but still she labored on, panting and plunging through the waves that broke and swept her decks from end to end.
It was near daylight, and Harry was sitting in the manner mentioned, when he observed that the floor of the cabin was covered with water. Of course a considerable quantity had been dashed in with him at the time he was struck by the wave and precipitated to the bottom, but it appeared that this quantity was increasing.
The constant pitching and tossing made it impossible for him to measure the hight by any mark upon the side of the cabin, but a few minutes’ careful survey convinced him that he was not mistaken.
Just then the dull thumping of one of the pumps reached his ears, and he understood that the vessel was leaking.
His little knowledge of a vessel had led him to suppose that in case they sprung a leak the last place into which the water made its way was the cabin; but he could well understand how in such a gale as this such furious wrenching must open the seams in a score of places.
“She is leaking—that’s certain!” he exclaimed, as the sousing and dashing of the water made his position anything but a pleasant one. “I believe it will gain upon them too, if the storm continues much longer, so that the hold will fill with water.”
Scarcely any change was to be noticed in the thunder-claps, which continually sounded in the ear with a stunning uproar to which Harry was in a certain respect indifferent. It was not the lightning which he feared, but the sea, the tempest; it was the shivering ship, the crashing billows, whose frightful perils he could not drive from his mind if he desired, which at any moment might consign him to the merciless ocean.