“You see,” said the Captain, “we can’t make it. It’ll be sundown in an hour. We’ll strike the coast some time after dark, and God have mercy on our souls.”
“You ain’t tellin’ the hands?” said Harman.
“No use tellin’ them. I told Mac, so that he might get the best out of the engines.”
“And there’s no bit of use gettin’ out life belts,” said Harman. “I know this coast; rocks as big as churches an’ cliffs that nuthin’ but flies could crawl up; and b’sides which if a chap found himself ashore he’d either starve or be et by niggers. They’re the curiosest chaps, those blighters down here. I guess the A’mighty spoiled them in the bakin’ and shoved them down here by the Horn to hide them from sight. Wonder what Wolff and Shiner is doin’ by this?”
“God knows!” said the Captain.
The darkness fell without a sight of the land, and, leaving the bos’n on the bridge, they came down for a while to the engineroom for a warm. Mac just inquired if there was any sight of land, and said nothing more.
The engines were no longer being pressed, and they smoked and watched the projection and retraction of the piston rods, the revolution of the cranks, and all the labours of this mighty organism so soon to be pounded and ground to death on the hard rocks ahead.
It was toward midnight that the coast spoke, so that all men could hear on board the Penguin.
Its voice came through the yelling blackness of the night like the roar of a railway train in the distance.