When they came to the beach, they found the whole village pushing on in a long straggling line the same way as themselves. The men were walking singly, either running or going very fast; and the women were in knots of twos and threes, straggling along and talking excitedly, with much gesticulation.
"There's some of the elect on board, I'll be bound," Charles heard one woman say, "as will be supping in glory this blessed night."
"Ay, ay," said an old woman. "I'd sooner be taken to rest sudden, like they're going to be, than drag on till all the faces you know are gone before."
"My boy," said another, "was lost in a typhoon in the China sea. Darn they lousy typhoons! I wonder if he thought of his mother afore he went down."
Among such conversation as this, with the terrible, ceaseless thunder of the surf upon the left, Charles, clinging tight to his two guardians, made the best weather of it he could, until they found themselves on the short turf of the promontory, with their faces seaward, and the water right and left of them. The cape ran out about a third of a mile, rather low, and then abruptly ended in a cone of slate, beyond which, about two hundred yards at sea, was that terrible sunken rock, "the Wolf," on to which, as sure as death, the flowing tide carried every stick which was embayed. The tide was making; a ship was known to be somewhere in the bay; it was blowing a hurricane; and what would you more?
They hurried along as well as they could among the sharp slates which rose through the turf, until they came to where the people had halted. Charles saw his father, the agent, Mackworth, and Cuthbert together, under a rock; the villagers were standing around, and the crowd was thickening every moment. Every one had his hand over his eyes, and was peering due to windward, through the driving scud.
They had stopped at the foot of the cone, which was between them and the sea, and some more adventurous had climbed partly up it, if, perhaps, they might see further than their fellows; but in vain: they all saw and heard the same—a blinding white cauldron of wind-driven spray below, and all around, filling every cranny, the howling storm.
A quarter of an hour since she fired last, and no signs of her yet. She must be carrying canvas and struggling for life, ignorant of the four-knot stream. Some one says she may have gone down—hush! who spoke?
Old Sam Evans had spoken. He had laid his hand on the squire's shoulder, and said, "There she is." And then arose a hubbub of talking from the men, and every one crowded on his neighbour and tried to get nearer. And the women moved hurriedly about, some moaning to themselves, and some saying, "Ah, poor dear!" "Ah, dear Lord! there she is, sure enough."
She hove in sight so rapidly that, almost as soon as they could be sure of a dark object, they saw that it was a ship—a great ship about 900 tons; that she was dismasted, and that her decks were crowded. They could see that she was unmanageable, turning her head hither and thither as the sea struck her, and that her people had seen the cliff at the same moment, for they were hurrying aft, and crowding on to the bulwarks.