The Ship of Coral

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Against this prodigious menace La Belle Arlésienne was moving, steering N.N.East on the starboard tack. Sagesse had taken in sail, but in the face of what was coming, not enough, to a sailor’s eye. But no one knew better than Sagesse that all to southward of him the sea was full of death, in the form of rocks and shoals; to make an offing was imperative.

Now the wind was coming in gusts, whipping the foam over the reef, and the spray in the face of Gaspard, and before the wind the league-long waves were racing shoreward.

As he looked, as he listened, the great wall seemed gradually to bend from the top and over it came the rushing wind, and with the wind the first note of thunder, profound, funereal, and dreamy; less like thunder than the muffle of muffled drums.

At this moment the setting sun, pale like an appalled spectator, glanced through the clouds, lit the sea, La Belle Arlésienne and the advancing wall of storm. It was no longer a wall; it had become concave, in the form of a breaking wave, and the wave became veiled with mist, and La Belle Arlésienne blotted out behind the roaring rain.

Dominating the thunder, the wind, the howling of the storm, the voice of the rain tore the air as it washed over the sea and then over the islet, wave-like and solid almost as a wave. It cast Gaspard down like a great hand and held him half drowned; it released him for half a second and before he could struggle to his feet the wind hit him and drove him like a rag amidst the bushes, and the sand of the beach rushed over him, not as sand but slush, half choking him. He thought the waves of the sea were upon him, but there were now no waves on the sea, which was as smooth beneath the wind as a new planed board, and as white as driven snow.

On his face, now, struggling to rise, he could not; it was as though a great sheet of iron held him down, and with the first real crash of thunder, prone on his face, he felt the earth splitting under him and shouted to the mud beneath him, “The world is gone—the world is gone!” But the world held fast though now, blow after blow, the gods seemed smashing at it with mighty hammers, sickening concussions, jets of light, deafness, blackness, misery, and the iron hand of the wind, all had fallen upon the world, rending thought to pieces. It could have lasted but a minute, this first desperate onslaught of the hurricane, yet to Gaspard it seemed that time had been torn away by the wind, that he had known eternity.

Now, released partly from the grip of that hateful hand which had pressed him nearly to death, he struggled to his knees and crawled further amidst the bushes where they were thickest; here there was shelter of a sort, the bushes low-growing and firm-rooted made a bulwark against the wind and the spindrift rushing across the island like blown white sheets. Again and again the yelling blackness would be lit by the lightning and the whirling spirals and blankets of spray above shown up only to vanish in the roaring darkness where the world seemed fighting for its life with chaos.

Then came stupor; like a man half under the influence of chloroform the man amidst the bushes, deafened, and blinded and stupefied by the torment around him, saw visions, and dreamt dreams in which the blinding lightning flashes lit blue seas and the voice of the wind was the voices of people.

How long he lay like this it would be impossible to say before raising himself on his elbow, he returned fully to consciousness.

The great fury of the hurricane had passed; it was still blowing hard and strong, but the worst was over and the moon was lighting the world through the rushing clouds. He rose to his feet, but fell on his knees again immediately. He had eaten nothing during the past twenty-four hours, and the drug was still weakening him; but in the moment of rising he had seen a sight surpassing in terror even the fury of the hurricane, and now amidst the bushes, on hands and knees, motionless and petrified by the drama before him, he looked.