“Yes.”
“Morgan!”
All answered to their names out of the pitchy blackness. The men, too, were safe, and upon crawling cautiously to the hatchway which closed in the cabin, Mrs Strong’s voice replied, saying that all was well, only that they were in an agony of dread.
It was a dread likely to continue for they were perfectly helpless, and all that the captain could make out was that the cutter had been uninjured by striking upon the rock, and that she was now floating upon an even keel, but in what direction it was impossible to say.
People often talk of “dark as pitch,” “black as ink,” and the like; but if ever there was an exemplification of this darkness it was now, for a cloud of the most intense blackness shut them in, and the occupants of the cutter could only communicate by word of mouth or touch.
“Surely this will lift soon!” said the major at last; and his voice sounded shut in and strange. “If that light would only shine out again!”
“To show us to our enemies, major,” said Gregory in a low voice.
“I don’t think any light would show us to them, Gregory,” said the captain solemnly.
“No,” said the major, “we have no more to fear from them.”
A dead silence succeeded for a few minutes as all realised how completely the slight prau had been engulfed while in such a chaos of waters no swimmer could possibly have been saved with a level sandy shore before him, far less among the black rocks of that walled-in bay.