“The drowning cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.”
And one sentence was mingled with the prayers of Leonard and Effie before they sought their couch—
“God save all at sea to-night.”
Book One—Chapter Eight.
“The Wreck! The Wreck!”
“The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
“She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool;
But the cruel rocks, they gored her sides
Like the horns of an angry bull.”
Longfellow.
Scene: The lighthouse island on the morning after the storm. The sea all around it, still covered with foam-capped waves. The wind dying away, but rising every now and then in uncertain gusts. No vessels in sight, but a long, low, rakish craft wedged in the rocks beneath the lighthouse, and fast breaking up. The whole scene bleak and desolate in the extreme.
“It is the lugger, sure enough,” said old Grindlay. “Heigho! what an awful affair, to be sure! And there can’t be a living soul on board. Captain Bland and all must have gone to their account.”