“Yes, it is coming,” I answered, “and I fear that it will sink us, at least so say the Indian sailors.”
“You take the idea of being drowned like a puppy in a sack very coolly, Ignatio. How far are we from Point Xicalango?”
“About twelve miles, I believe, and I take it coolly because there is no use in making an outcry. God will protect us if He chooses, and if He chooses He will drown us. It is childish to struggle against destiny.”
“A true Indian creed, Ignatio,” he answered; “you people sit down and say—‘It is fate, let us accept it’—but one that I and the men of my nation do not believe in. If they had done so, instead of being the first country in the world to-day, England long ago would have ceased to exist, for many a time she has stood face to face with Fate and beaten her. For my part, if I must die, I prefer to die fighting. Tell me, are any of these people to be relied on if it comes to a pinch?”
“The Indian sailors are Campeche men and brave, also they know the coast, and if need be they will do anything that I tell them. For the rest I cannot say, but the captain seems to understand something of his business. Look and listen!”
As I spoke a vivid flash of lightning pierced the heavens above us, followed by a deafening peal of thunder. In its fierce and sudden glare we could see the coast some three or four miles away, and almost ahead of us the bolder outline of Point Xicalango. The water about our ship was dead calm, and slipped past her sides like oil; the smoke in the funnel rose almost straight into the air, where at a certain height it twisted round and round; and a sail that had been hoisted flapped to and fro for lack of wind to draw it.
A mile or so to windward, however, was a different sight, for there came the norther, rushing upon us like a thing alive; in front of it a line of white billows torn from the quiet surface of the sea, and behind it, fretted by little lightnings, a dense wall of black cloud stretching from the face of ocean to the arc of heaven.
Now the captain, who was on deck, saw his danger, for if those billows caught us broadside on we must surely founder. In the strange silence that followed the boom of the thunder, he shouted to the helmsman to bring the ship head on to the sea, and to the sailors to batten down the after-hatch, the only one that remained open, shutting the passengers, except ourselves and Molas, into the cabin.
His orders were obeyed well and quickly, the Santa Maria came round and began to paddle towards the open water and the advancing line of foam. It was terrible to see her, so small a thing, driving on thus into what appeared to be the very jaws of death. Now the unnatural quiet was broken, a low moaning noise thrilled through the air, the waters about the ship’s side began to seethe and hiss, and spray flying ahead of the wind cut our faces like the lash of a whip.
A few more seconds and something white and enormous could be seen looming above our bows, and the sight of it caused the captain, whose face looked pale as death in the gleam of the lightnings, to shriek another order to his crew.