Ding-dong, ding-dong!
“It is the first dinner-bell from the Castle of Arrandoon,” said Ralph to himself; “Allan and his sister will be waiting, I must hurry home.”
Ding-dong, ding-dong-ding!
Ralph was wide awake now, and sitting up in his little bed. It was all dark; it must be midnight, he thought, or long past.
Ding-dong, ding-dong-ding again, followed by a terrible rush of water and a quivering of the vessel, the like of which he had never known before.
Ding, ding, ding! It was the seas breaking over the Snowbird and ringing her bell.
“What an awakening!” thought poor Ralph, and he shivered as he listened, partly with cold and partly, it must be confessed, with an undefinable feeling of alarm. And no wonder!
It was, indeed, a fearful night!
The gale had burst upon them in all its fury, and, well prepared though she was aloft to contend with it, it would require all the vessel’s powers of endurance and all the skill of the manly hearts on board of her, to bring her safely through it. Every time a sea struck her it sounded below like a dull, heavy thud; it stopped her way for a moment or two. It was then she quivered from stem to stern, like some creature in agony, and Ralph could hear the water washing about the decks overhead and pouring down below. The seas, striking the ship, gave him the idea of blows from something soft but terribly strong, and, ridiculous though it may seem, for the life of him Ralph could not help thinking of the bolster fights of the days of his boyhood. What other sounds did he hear? The constant and incessant creaking of the yacht’s timbers, the rattle of the rudder chains, and, high over all, the roar of the tempest in the rigging aloft. In the lull of the gale every now and then, he could hear the trampling of feet and voices—voices giving and voices answering words of command.
“Starboard a little! Steady?”