The whole scene was bright before me as I turned. Every soul on board stood out in a clearness like the day. Against the mast stood Gerry, one arm round it, one round Vi’s waist, while before the two of them Garlicke and Lessaution had sprung, facing sternly the hill of death, jealously valiant in their pride of race. To the left Janson and Denvarre still held the rail, staring aft with wide, fascinated eyes. Waller and Rafferty at the wheel stood expectant, their shoulders squared to meet and give to the coming shock. The crew, distributed here and there in two and threes, were bracing themselves against the deck-house, mast, or funnel. In the utter quiet the last few wreaths of steam from the engine died circling into the still air.
Up, up we staggered, and little whirls and boils from the under-current shot creamy and foam-flecked to the surface. Up—still rising fast, as the billows broke suddenly from the calm, and chased each other over its heaving bosom. Up yet again, and the red glow of the volcanoes beat no longer upon the faces of the unconquered cliffs before us, but upon their very summits, and upon the wide waste of emptiness behind.
Then as the full surge of the reeling ridge of ocean swept us forward, the crown of the topmost rollers broke aboard. With a crash it roared white and foaming along our decks, and in a trice we were carried in a huddle of men and splintered spars into the deep bay of the forward bulwarks. There, bruised and speechless, breathless, with limbs entwined in limbs, and ropes and timbers woven and splayed about our bodies, we lay helpless as kittens drowning in a bucket, and the ship shot forward upon the head of the great ridge-wave straight for the cruel precipice of granite. Without a hope and stunned beyond struggling we waited for the final crash and oblivion.
As we charged along that wild race into eternity, the great crags that five minutes before had hung mockingly above our heads sank below us, and we rode high above their cringing heads.
We realized as in a moment, that the growing bulk of billows would lift us cleanly over them. A hundred yards more at speed, and the cliffs were gone, and a broad wilderness of waters swarmed over their crannies, and into the rocky void beyond. As by a miracle the skirting waves that ran before us filled the dry plain, and with half the weight of the sea-torrent still behind us we shot out on to the bosom of this sudden lake.
Like an arrow we swung across its turbid shallows, charging toward the far side, where it was bounded by a second terrace of sheer stone. The foremost waves smote the rock face full. Charging back, their defeated fury met and foamed around us, catching us before we reached the cruel reefs. The incoming and out-flowing surges sprang together almost beneath our keel, and we tossed and reeled from one to the other in the final throb of the great convulsion. Then the fighting breakers spread abroad. Each spent its dying force upon its neighbor, and ere we could extract ourselves from the mass of wreckage that wedged us in below the bulwarks, the yacht was swinging masterless and idle upon a rippling, white-flecked lagoon, showing less turmoil than a mid-June day can raise on Windermere.
CHAPTER X
BEHIND THE BARRIER
Gwen was unconscious as I lifted her, and a bruise showed red and staring on her white temple. I laid her gently against the bulwark and made a dash for the saloon. Lady Delahay lay in a dead faint at the stair-foot, slipping there, I supposed, after her unceremonious bundling through the door. I snatched the whiskey from the sideboard, laid the good lady on the sofa and raced on deck again. Gerry was on his feet, and the rest gathered themselves out of the tangle one by one. Lessaution was the first to break silence.
“Behold,” he said triumphantly, “that we are on the top,” and he spread abroad his little arms like a glorified cock a-crow, revelling in the achievement of his hopes, and utterly ignoring the desperate result.
I shoved him impatiently on one side to get back to Gwen again. She was leaning white-faced and motionless against the bulwark, and my heart gave a queer thump when I saw how still she lay. I put my arm around her, and ever so gently tilted a few drops of spirit between her lips. A sigh and a gasp broke from her, and the color began to pass back into her cheeks. She opened her eyes, and looked at me dreamily. A satisfied little smile edged her mouth, and she settled back against my shoulder with a murmur of content, nestling into the encirclement of my arm as happily as if I was Denvarre’s self.