There was neither rain nor snow; but the storm, in the seaman’s sense of the word, was approaching its height. The wind had now become a gale, and blew southeast. The sky was ominously black. To Bayard’s sensitive and excited imagination, as he looked out from the reeling wagon, the mouth of the harbor seemed to gape and grin; the lights of the fleet, furled and anchored for dear life, lost their customary pleasant look, and snapped and shone like teeth in the throat of a monster.
The wagons rolled on madly; the horses, lashed to their limit of speed, leaped down Windover Point. They had now left the road, and were dashing across the downs which stretched a mile farther to the eastern shore. The roughness of the route had become appalling, but a Cape horse is as used to boulders as a Cape fisherman; neither wagon overset, though both rolled like foundering ships. The lanterns cut swathes of light in the blackness which bounding wheels and racing heels mowed down before them.
Walls of darkness rose ahead, and at its outermost, uttermost margin roared the sea. It seemed to Bayard as if the rescuing party were plunging into eternal mystery.
The old woman whose son was aboard the Clara Em crouched at the minister’s feet. Both sat in the dory, which filled the wagon, and which was packed with passengers. The old woman’s bare hands were clenched together, and her lips shut like iron hinges. Bayard wondered at her massive silence. It was something primeval, solemn, outside of his experience. The women of the shore, in stress like hers, would weep, would sob, or shriek. But to the women of the sea this anguish was as old as life itself: to it they were born, and of it they were doomed to die; they bore it as they did the climate of the freezing Cape.
“That there saving service couldn’t ha’ done nothin’ agin’ a wreck on Ragged Rock if they wanted to,” observed the old captain (they called him Captain Hap), peering from the wagon towards the harbor shore. “It’s jest’s I told ye; they’re too fur—five mile across.”
“But why is there no station nearer?” demanded Bayard with the warmth of inexperience. “Why is nothing put over here—if this reef is so bad—where it is needed?”
“Wall,” said Captain Hap, with deliberation, “that’s a nateral question for a land-lubber. Every seaman knows there ain’t no need of gettin’ wrecked on that there reef. It’s as plain as the beard on your face. Windover Light to the west’ard, Twin Lights to the east’ard,—a fog bell, and a bell-buoy, and a whistlin’-buoy,—Lord! why, everybody knows how to keep off Ragged Rock!”
“Then how did this vessel happen to strike?” persisted Bayard. The men interchanged glances, and no one answered him.
“Hi there! Look, look! I see her! I see her spars!” yelled a young fellow on the front seat of the wagon. “It’s her! It’s the Clara Em!... Lord A’mighty! what in —— was they thinkin’ of? She’s got on full canvas! See her! see her! see her! See her lights! It’s her, and she’s bumpin’ on the reef!”