“She does that, sir. It is lucky we have got our moorings in the middle of the harbour, and none of the fishing-boats are near enough to interfere with her. You see most of them have got their sails and nets rolled up as fenders, but in spite of that they have been ripping and tearing each other shocking. There will be jobs for the carpenter for some time to come. Five or six of them have torn away their bulwarks already.”
After waiting down by the port for an hour Horace returned to the house. When luncheon was over he was just about to start again for the port, when Marco said to him:
“Dick has just been in, sir. There is going to be a wreck. There are a lot of fishermen gathered on the cliff half a mile away to the right. They say there is a ship that will come ashore somewhere along there.”
“Come on, then, Marco. Did you hear whether they thought that anything could be done?”
“I did not hear anything about it. I don’t think they know where she will go ashore yet.”
In a few minutes they reached the group of fishermen standing on the cliff. It was a headland beyond which the land fell away, forming a bay some three miles across. A large barque was to be seen some two miles off shore. She was wallowing heavily in the seas, and each wave seemed to smother her in spray. Tom Burdett was among the group, and Horace went up to him at once.
“What’s to prevent her from beating off, Tom? She ought to be able to work out without difficulty.”
“So she would at ordinary times,” the skipper said; “but she is evidently a heavy sailer and deep laden. She could do it now if they could put more sail on her, but I expect her canvas is all old. You see her topsails are all in ribbons. Each of them seas heaves her bodily to leeward. She is a doomed ship, sir, there ain’t no sort of doubt about that; the question is, Where is she coming ashore?”
“Will it make much difference, Tom?”