Such was the constant burden of her thoughts and prayers.
There might have been others left on the wreck with Justin Rosenthal, but she scarcely remembered their existence; she thought only of him!
There was appalling danger surrounding herself and her companions in the boat, but she hardly cared for it; she suffered only for him!
Now, in this awful hour of doom, all the depths of her soul had been opened up, and she knew how strongly, how ardently, how devotedly she really loved him—how entirely he possessed her life!
Meanwhile, the danger to the boat and its crew was imminent. The sea ran high and heavy, threatening every instant to swallow them up. The shore, toward which they were blindly struggling, was covered with clouds and fogs that might hide, for aught they knew, more frightful perils than those from which they were trying to escape.
What this shore was, no one had the least idea. For twenty-four hours before the storm, no observation had been taken and no reckoning made; and during the storm, the ship had been driven some hundreds of miles out of her course, so that no one knew on what rocks she was wrecked, or to what land this struggling boat was tending. The wind, that had fallen at sunrise, now started up from another quarter, and blew directly off the fog-hidden land. This soon cleared away all the mist and revealed a rugged, rock-bound coast, more terrific in its aspect than the sea itself.
And the sea was growing darker and wilder every instant, and the boat was tossed like a cockle shell on the mad waves. They lowered the little sail to prevent the wind capsizing the boat, and they took to the oars and worked hard through the heavy seas along the shores, keeping as well as they could off the rocks, and watching for some opening to effect a landing.
One of the men had a pocket compass in his possession, and he took it out and set it, and saw that they were rowing northward.
The sun was sinking down through a bank of clouds behind the land, when the boat’s crew, still striving with the wild waves and rowing northward, saw that they were coming to a point that seemed to be the most northern extremity of some island.
“If we can once round that point,” said one of the sailors, “we can get under the lee shore, and may manage to make a landing.”