The wind increases in force every moment.
The great black rocks are close above her lee bow. Looking upwards, the wild flowers can be seen hanging to the banks and cliffs—saxifrages, heath, broom, and golden gorse. So close is the barque that the sea-birds that have alighted on the cliffs as the sun kissed the waves, startled by the flapping canvas, soar off again and go screaming skywards.
The sun is down now altogether, and the gale has rushed at the vessel like a wild beast seeking its lawful prey; the seas are dashing over her, the spray flying high over the bending masts.
The gale has leapt upon them, too, from a pillar of cloud, and with forked and flashing lightning.
Are they round the point? No one on that deck can tell as yet. The roar and the surge is deafening. The gloom is appalling, men can hardly breathe, the words the captain tries to shout to those at the wheel are carried away on the wind. The crew clutch at the rigging, and feel choking, drowning.
“Keep her away now!” It was Leonard’s voice in a wheelman’s ear. They were round the point!
The barque is flying. The topsails are rent in ribbons. What matters it? The open sea is before them. Yes, but like a tiger baulked of its prey, the squall suddenly increases to the force of a hurricane, and next moment the good ship is helpless on her beam ends.
Had the force of the gale been kept up many minutes the ship would have foundered, none would have been left alive to tell the tale. In some sandy bay in through those rocks and cliffs other dead swollen bodies would have been cast up like those on the Shetland shores, to lie with lustreless eyes in the morning’s sunshine.
The squall abated, the sky cleared, the gale itself has spent its fury, and goes growling away to leeward.
With hatchet and knife in hardy hands the wreck is cleared away at last, and the Fairy Queen rides in the moonlight on an even keel.