“We must give it a wide berth, then, if we double it at all; the current around that point would suck the boat down to destruction in no time,” said another seaman.
They turned a little off and struck out to sea, meaning to give the point with its fatal maelstrom “the wide berth” that their comrade recommended.
The sun went down and night gathered, and all was hidden from her view.
The boat’s crew labored on through the darkness of the night, the beating of the wind and the roughness of the sea, striving to round that point and get under the lee short of the land. But as night deepened the sky grew darker, the wind higher, and the sea wilder. It was a miracle that the boat lived from moment to moment, through several hours of that dread death struggle, but while they strove for life, they expected only death. They made what blind preparations they could to meet the greater calamity, when the boat itself should be lost. The men were strong swimmers, as well as good sailors and good oarsmen. Some of them took the oars, while others fastened what life-preservers they had at hand on the persons of the helpless women.
Miss Conyers objected.
“Pray, don’t,” she said. “It will be but a prolongation of the death agony. I had rather drown at once and have it all over, than beat about for hours in this wild, dark sea, and perish miserably at last.”
“Bedad, though, there’s a chance of life at last! And sure I promised the masther to thry and save ye, and faix I’ll do it! Help me here, Terry!” said Mike Mullony, and with the assistance of Terry Riordan, the father of the Irish stewardess, he invested Miss Conyers with the life-preserver.
Not an instant too soon!
There came roaring onward an enormous wave that lifted itself high above and fell with annihilating force upon them. And in an instant the boat was gone, and the souls that had intrusted themselves to her were struggling in the mad sea.
Britomarte almost lost her senses in this shock of doom; and then she found herself in the wild waters, kept up indeed by the life-preserver, but dashed hither and thither, a helpless creature, at the mercy of the waves. And the night was appalling with the howling of the wind and the roaring of the waters and the shrieks of the drowning men and women!