But for the moment no one thought, for every faculty appeared to be concentrated upon the fate of that long low prau crowded with men, and now glistening in the volcanic light, as it seemed to be riding rapidly among so much golden foam. The roar of the wave was terrific as the waters surged, and for the moment it seemed to them that the prau would be hurled right upon the rocks where the cutter lay careened over, but with her bows to the coming wave that glistened luridly like a long wall of ruddy water crowned with foam.
“Hold fast by the bulwark, boy,” whispered the captain as he passed his arm round Mark. “Cling all tightly for your lives.”
Suddenly a low hoarse cry was uttered by all on board, for as the prau was borne toward them it must have caught upon the summit of some rock hidden by the wave, and that check was sufficient. As that cry arose the prau turned right over and disappeared completely from view, while at that moment there was another of the tremendous explosions from the mountain, succeeded by instantaneous darkness. The cutter was lifted up as the wave struck her, and then after a bound and a quiver she seemed to plunge down—down as if into hideous depths; while half suffocated by the broken water, drenched, shivering, and feeling as if his arms had been wrenched from their sockets, Mark Strong still clung to the bulwark, thinking of those below, and asking himself in his blank horror whether this was the end.
He was conscious of a crash as of the vast wave striking the curved wall of rocks at the head of the bay; of the noise of many waters; of the cutter plunging and whirling round and then seeming to ride easily in the midst of subsiding waves; and then of hearing a low hoarse sigh close to his ear.
“Father,” he cried, “are you there?”
“Yes, my boy,” came out of the darkness close at hand. “Thank God we are so far safe!”
Then, as if rousing himself to a sense of his position, he called aloud:
“Major O’Halloran!”
“Yes.”
“Gregory!”