"The Hill of Howth and the rocks at the foot of it!" cried Fitzmaurice as he recognized the position. "Now God help us, for they are dead to leeward, and if we have any accounts to settle we had better settle them rapidly!"
There was little agitation in his tone, now, and there was none in that of the American as he replied two words. They were the last he ever spoke, to mortal ear. May they have been true when he awoke from his long sleep, as they were before he fell into it! Those two words were:
"I see!"
The two men were standing, as has been said, very near the larboard quarter. The Emerald, too, as has also been already said, was very low in the bulwarks, as befitted her rake and her clipper appearance. Just as the lawyer uttered the two words, one of the officers of the steamer came aft, holding on amidst the terrible roll with something of the tenacity of a cat, and took his place at the wheel. The mist had closed down again and the Hill of Howth and the breakers were both for the moment shut away.
There was a jar—a creeping, trembling jar that seemed to run through the little steamer, from stem to stern-post, and yet no blow from the fierce waves and no grinding of her keel upon the dreaded rocks. It was life—motion—the beat of machinery once more! At that critical juncture the engine had moved again for the first time, and if not safety there was yet at least another struggle with destiny. The officer had dashed back to throw the steamer up into the wind, the very instant that he felt the steam once more rushing into the cylinder.
Then followed what cannot be described, because no one living can say precisely what occurred. Gathering way almost in an instant from the mad dash of her wheels into the water, the little Emerald plunged forward as if for her life. She had but a hundred or two yards of vantage ground left, and seemed to know it. As she gathered way and the quick whirl of the wheel swept her head gradually round to the sea, one mighty wave, as if afraid of being baulked of its prey and determined upon a final effort, struck her under the weather bow and port wheel and sent her careening so low to leeward that the starboard wheel-house and even the starboard quarter-rail were under water. She rolled back again in an instant, triumphant over the great enemy, and thenceforward dashed away from the white breakers on her lee as if she had been merely tantalizing them with a futile prospect of her destruction,—to make her way safely two hours afterwards into Kingstown Harbor and to land the Queen's messenger (who had just then awoke) and the correspondent of the Evening Mail, only an hour later than the passengers by the packet had disembarked.
But she did not land the American. When the steamer rolled down with her starboard quarter-rail under water, Fitzmaurice, standing nearest to the larboard quarter, called out to his companion: "Look out and hold on!" then clutched the bulwark with his own hands and obeyed his own injunction. But when the steamer righted he was alone! Whether the lawyer had missed footing and failed to grasp any point of support at the critical moment, or whether he had lost head in the dizzying motion and gone over without even knowing his danger,—certain it is that he had been swept overboard under circumstances in which the whole British navy could have done no more to save him than one child of ten years! Henry Fitzmaurice, missing him and dreading what had really occurred, thought that for one second he saw a human head, with the hair streaming up, away off in the yeasty water: but that was all. And he said, bitterly, realizing all the painful facts of the event, and taking to himself a thought of regret that was likely to cling to him while his generous heart continued to beat:
"My God!—it was just as I thought! I have been the means of drowning that splendid fellow, after all!"
A few hours later, little Shelah, the barefooted daughter of one of the poor fishermen whose hut stood at the foot of Howth, around northward towards Ireland's Eye—little Shelah, who had gone down over the rocks to the beach when the worst of the storm was over, rushed back to the cabin with terror in her eyes and broken words upon her lips: