Joe was clinging tightly to the bridge of the Nomad.
Spray, flying like dust through the dense mid-afternoon twilight, stung his face. The wind whipped out his garments stiff, as if they had been made of metal, and half choked the words back down his throat.
Nat made no reply. He clung grimly to his wheel, striving with might and main to head the Nomad into the furious waves. Ding-dong Bell had emerged on deck an instant before, but had been promptly ordered below again.
“Keep your engines doused with oil; give them plenty of gasolene, and stand by for signals,” had been the young captain’s orders.
Below, beside his shining, laboring engines, Ding-dong was valorously striving to carry those orders out. But the strain on the motors was as great as they had ever been called upon to bear, even in the memorable encounter with the waterspouts.
Besides heading into the storm, Nat was “bucking” the strange current that set toward the island chasm. But powerfully as the Nomad’s propeller churned the driving seas, the unseen tide was more powerful still.
“Nat, we’re bound to be drawn into that gorge within a few minutes, unless——”
“Unless a miracle happens.”
Joe’s comment and Nat’s rejoinder were both shouted above the storm. Their voices sounded feeble as whispers amid the fury of the conflicting elements.
Hardly a hundred yards now separated the storm-battered Nomad from the towering walls and boiling waters of the chasm. Inevitably, unless the miracle of which Nat had spoken occurred, they must, in a few moments, be laboring in the midst of that ominous-looking place. While the thought was still pulsating through their minds, and their hearts beat high with apprehension, the dreaded thing happened.