The nuns were busy with their beads, and even Mrs. Fergus bent her head. At last it was Mother Agnes who spoke, letting her rosary drop.
“’Twas whin they allowed the holy well to be choked up and lost sight of among fallen stones that throuble first come to the O’Mahonys,” she said solemnly. “’Tis mesilf will beg The O’Mahony, on binded knees, to dig it open again. Worse luck, he’s away to Cork or Waterford with his boat, and this storm’ll keep him from returning, till, perhaps, the final disasther falls on us and our house, and he still absinting himsilf. Wirra! What’s that?”
The mother-superior had been forced to lift her voice, in concluding, to make it distinct above the hoarse roar of the elements outside. Even as she spoke, a loud crackling noise was heard, followed by a crash of masonry which deafened the listeners’ ears and shook the walls of the room they sat in.
With a despairing groan, the three nuns fell to their knees and bowed their vailed heads over their beads.
CHAPTER X—HOW THE “HEN HAWK” WAS BROUGHT IN.
The good people of Muirisc had shut themselves up in their cabins, on this inclement evening of which I have spoken, almost before the twilight faded from the storm-wrapt outlines of the opposite coast. If any adventurous spirit of them all had braved the blast, and stood out on the cliff to see night fall in earnest upon the scene, perhaps between wild sweeps of drenching and blinding spray, he might have caught sight of a little vessel, with only its jib set, plunging and laboring in the trough of the Atlantic outside. And if the spectacle had met his eyes, unquestionably his first instinct would have been to mutter a prayer for the souls of the doomed men upon this fated craft.
On board the Hen Hawk a good many prayers had already been said. The small coaster seemed, to its terrified crew, to have shrunk to the size of a walnut shell, so wholly was it the plaything of the giant waters which heaved and tumbled about it, and shook the air with the riotous tumult of their sport. There were moments when the vessel hung poised and quivering upon the very ridge of a huge mountain of sea, like an Alpine climber who shudders to find himself balanced upon a crumbling foot of rock between two awful depths of precipice; then would come the breathless downward swoop into howling space and the fierce buffeting of ton-weight blows as the boat staggered blindly at the bottom of the abyss; then again the helpless upward sweep, borne upon the shoulders of titan waves which reared their vast bulk into the sky, the dizzy trembling upon the summit, and the hideous plunge—a veritable nightmare of torture and despair.
Five men lay or knelt on deck huddled about the mainmast, clinging to its hoops and ropes for safety. Now and again, when the vessel was lifted to the top of the green walls of water, they caught vague glimpses of the distant rocks, darkling through the night mists, which sheltered Muirisc, their home—and knew in their souls that they were never to reach that home alive. The time for praying was past. Drenched to the skin, choked with the salt spray, nearly frozen in the bitter winter cold, they clung numbly to their hold, and awaited the end.