It was all over in a moment. A roar like a thousand thunders, a stunning blow impossible to imagine, and then—a broad, wreck-strewn expanse, amid which those few poor atoms of humanity showed but as black dots for a moment, soon to be sucked beneath the seething waves.
By dawn of the next day the storm was over, for that gray-back had been one of those climaxes in which nature seems to delight; and, having done its worst, the winds hushed their fury, and wailed away into a chill, sullen, but clearing morning.
The remainder of the fleet, scattered in every direction by the storm, did not discover the absence of the Nautilus till mid-forenoon, when bits of wreckage, into which they sailed, soon told the pitiful story. Towards noon two bodies were found, that of the captain and steersman, afloat in the pilot-house, but no more; the fate of Reuben, the boy, and the three other hands could only be conjectured.
The next day the drowned men were given honorable burial; and many of the remaining vessels, having been almost disabled by the fury of the elements, had to make for the nearest port for repairs.
Then came a fair and "lucky" run, in which not a hand could be spared to carry the news home, for these fishermen learn to look almost with contempt upon death and disaster. Many a poor fellow with a broken limb must go days, even weeks, before he can reach a physician; and the friends on shore are left as long in ignorance of their fate.
Nearly a month had passed, then, since that awful night, when Jasper Norris, dreading his task as he had never dreaded any physical danger in his life, walked down the village street toward Sara and Morton in the cottage doorway.
The former watched him with a growing feeling of suffocation and tightness about her throat and heart, for the droop of his figure was ominous.
Had there been good news he would have given a sailors' hurrah at sight of them, and bounded on, waving his cap in welcome. But, still in dead silence, he turned into the little broken gate, and walked up the path to the door.
Sara, quite white now, and leaning for support against the jamb, kept her piercing eyes on his face, though his would not meet their gaze; while Morton rolled great frightened orbs from one to the other, as from within came unconscious Molly's gleeful babble, and the baby's sweet little trills of laughter.
"Jasper!" gasped Sara in desperation, "why—why don't you speak?"