It came on in foam and fury, lightning even playing athwart and behind it.
“All hands on deck!” roared Harry. In his excitement he hardly knew what he was saying. “Stand by to let go everything! Hard a port!”
Everything indeed! Hardly had he spoken ere the squall was on them, the wind roaring like a den of wild beasts, the sea around them like a maelstrom, ropes snapped like worsted threads, sails in ribbons, and rattling like platoon fire, blocks adrift, sheets streaming like pennants, and the canvas that held out-bellying to the dreadful blast and carrying the vessel astern at the rate of knots.
Caught aback in a white squall! no situation can be more dangerous or appalling! Well for them was it that the Bunting was long and low and rakish; a brig would have gone down stern first, giving those on board hardly time to utter a prayer.
For five long minutes astern she sped. Two men were knocked down dangerously wounded, and washed into the lee scuppers, where they would have been drowned, but for the almost superhuman exertions of the surgeon and steward.
Five long minutes, but see, good seamanship has triumphed! She is round at last, all sail off that could be got off. She is scudding almost under bare poles—scudding whither?
Scudding straight apparently to destruction. Through the mist and the rain that swallows the moonlight, they cannot make out a reef that lies right ahead of them, till she is on it, till she rasps and bumps, till every man is thrown flat on deck, and the man pitched over the wheel.
It is all up with the Bunting!
Ah! many a half-despairing prayer went heavenward then, many a half-smothered cry for mercy from Him to whom all things are possible, and who holds the sea in the hollow of His hand.
Bending over his bleeding patients down below in the steerage, the doctor never ceases his work, albeit the ship has struck, and the seas are making a clear breach over, albeit he is up to the ankles in the water that is pouring down green through the hatchway.