“Oh, but I am!—I am!” shivered the Count in abject fear. “To leave this world I love for I know not what. Oh, what comes after?”
“God!” said Crispin solemnly.
“God!” echoed the Greek in a tone of despairing conviction. “What is God? I know nothing beyond this world—what I see!—what I feel!—nothing else. But you say there is a God!—there is a God! Oh, what will He say to me?”
“Ask your own conscience.”
“Conscience!” cried Caliphronas, with a sneer, which but ill became his ghastly face; “what do I know of conscience? I have been wicked, but no worse than my neighbors. After all, it is death and then—annihilation. It is that I fear—to no longer see the sun, nor feel the wind, nor life in the veins. Life is so glad, death so terrible! But I will undo some of my work that you saints call wicked. Yes, I will tell you, Mr. Maurice, the reason I brought you to Melnos.”
“Oh, tell me, tell me!” cried Maurice eagerly; “you brought me here to”—
He did not finish the sentence, for at this moment a gust of unexampled strength tore past them with a shriek, and snapped the mainmast by the board, crashing it downward with tremendous force. Falling over the side, it impeded the yacht’s course, and brought her gunwale dangerously near the water. The black smoke poured in volumes from her funnel, the screw beat the water with enormous power, but the heavy mass, the huge canvas, the entanglement of ropes, all held her back, and down on one side, to the great imperilling of her safety.
“Axes!” roared Martin, in a voice of thunder; “cut away the ropes! Look smart, my lads, for your lives! If she pitches to wind’ard, and brings the mast against the bilge, it’s all Davy Jones for sure!”
The sailors flew to do his bidding, and though, owing to the perpetual pitching of the vessel, they could not work continuously, yet in the space of half an hour they managed to clear away the wreckage, which fell over into the boiling waters, while the yacht righted herself like a trembling deer. The man at the wheel of course kept the set course indicated by the captain, but, the engines being slowed down during the clearance episode, the ship sagged gradually to leeward, until she drifted dangerously near to the rocks of Kamila.
All were so busily engaged clearing away the wreckage, that this new peril was unnoticed, until the moon, half-obscured by the flying scud, shone out palely on the wild scene. Attracted by the glimmer of the planet, Martin looked up suddenly from his work, only to see the towering cliffs of the island near at hand, and the caps of the sea rising like fountains of spouting foam over the cruel-looking rocks.