When the captain came on deck the crew had taken to the boat, already half-filled with water, and were some distance from the sinking bark.
It would have been useless to force them to return, even if such a thing was possible, for the little craft could not approach the foundering bark in the teeth of the gale without being stove to pieces, and the four officers and Philip stood gazing at the rapidly retreating boat with despair written on every feature of their countenances.
This was the culmination of disasters, and from it there appeared to be no way of escape.
They could do but little toward providing for their own safety. It was simply a question of whether the wreck would float until some friendly craft could be sighted; and this was answered within two hours from the time the crew abandoned her.
While the five despairing men were busily engaged constructing a raft of such materials as could be hastily gathered from the wave-swept deck, the Swallow gave a mighty lurch to port; then rising on her stern-post, as if endeavoring to escape from the doom which was now so close at hand, she settled to starboard with such rapidity that those on board had not even time to throw over the timbers they had partially lashed together.
Fortunately, so far as Philip Garland was concerned, he had been hurled beyond the whirlpool caused by the foundering vessel, and as he struck out, instinctively rather than because of hope, his hands came in contact with the fragments of the quarter-boat.
Dazed by the shock and blinded with the driving spray, he grasped with the clutch of a dying man the frail timbers, and heeded not the black clouds which opened to belch forth fire and peals of thunder.
The shrieking wind tossed the wreckage upon the angry, white-crested waves which gleamed like the fangs of some devouring monster, and the rain descended in torrents.