The vessel was coming up under close-reefed topsails, bow on to the headland on the western side of the bay; and, almost at the very instant the brothers saw her, she struck with a crash on the rocks, the surf rushing up the steep face of the cliff and falling back on the deck of the ill-fated craft in sheets of spray like soapsuds.
Fritz and Eric clasped their hands in mute supplication to heaven; but, at the same moment, the spars of the vessel—she was a brig, they could see—fell over her side with a crash. There was a grinding and rending of timbers; and then, one enormous wave, as of three billows rolled into one, poured over her in a cataract.
One concentrated shriek of horror and agony came from the seething whirlpool of broken water, and, all was over; for, when the foam had washed away with the retreating wave, not a single vestige could be seen of the hapless craft!
She had sunk below the sea with those on board.
“Oh, brother, it is awful!” cried Eric.
Fritz could not answer. His throat was filled with a great gulping lump which prevented him from drawing his breath; while his eyes were suffused with tears that no unmanly feelings had called forth.
Eric was starting off again down to the beach, to see whether any one had escaped from the wreck and been swept into the bay, in which case he might have been of use in trying to drag them from the clutch of the cruel waves, when Fritz called him back.
“Don’t leave me behind, brother,” he cried out passionately. “Wheel me down, in the barrow, so that I may help, too!”
The lad stopped in a instant, comprehending his brother’s request; and, flying back, in and out of the hut as if he had been galvanised, he quickly placed the old door on top of the wheelbarrow as a sort of platform, with a mattress on top. He then lifted Fritz on the superstructure as if he were a child, the excitement having given him tenfold strength; and, wheeling the barrow down at a run, the two arrived on the beach almost sooner than a boat could have pulled ashore from the point where the catastrophe to the vessel had occurred.
But, although it was now light enough to scan the surface of the restless sea for some distance out, no struggling form could be seen battling with the waves; nor was there a single fragment of the wreck noticeable, tossing about on the billows that still rolled in thunderingly on the beach, marking out the contour of the bay with a line of white surf, which shone out in contrast to the glittering black sand that was ever and anon displayed as the back-wash of the waves swept out again in a downward curve preparatory to the billows hurling themselves in shore once more with renewed force.