Fritz made no reply. He hurried through a deluge of rain and hail to take shelter with Jenny and Dolly and Susan, who were intensely anxious. Owing to its position in the corner of the promontory, the inside of the cave had not been flooded.
Towards midnight, when the rain had stopped, the boatswain piled a heap of sea-weed near the mouth of the cave. A bright fire soon blazed, drying their drenched clothes.
Until the fury of the storm abated the whole sky was incessantly ablaze. The pealing thunder diminished as the clouds were driven rapidly towards the north. But as long as distant lightning continued to light up the bay, the wind blew with great force, lifting billows which plunged and broke wildly on the shore.
At dawn the men came out of the cave. Tattered clouds were passing over the cliff. Some, hanging lower, skimmed the surface. During the night the lightning had struck it in several places. Huge fragments of rock lay at its base. But there was no sign of a new cleft or crevice into which it might be possible to squeeze, and so to reach the plateau above.
Captain Gould, Fritz, and John Block took stock of what was left of the boat. It comprised the mast, the foresail and the jib, the rigging, the hawsers, the rudder, the oars, the anchor and its cable, the wooden seats, and the casks of fresh water. Some use could no doubt be made of most of these things, damaged as they were.
“Fortune has tried us cruelly!” Fritz said. “If only we had not these poor women with us—three women and a child! What fate awaits them here on this shore, which we cannot even leave now!”
Even Frank, with all his faith, kept silence this time. What could he say?
But John Block was wondering whether the storm had not brought yet another disaster upon the shipwrecked company, for so they might well be described. Was there not good reason to fear that the turtles might have been destroyed by the breakers, and their eggs smashed as the sand was washed away? It would be an irreparable loss if this food supply failed.
The boatswain made a sign to Frank to come to him, and said a few words in an undertone. Then both crossed the promontory and went down to the creek, intending to go over it as far as the bluff.
While Captain Gould, Fritz, and James went towards the western bastion, Jenny and Dolly and Susan resumed their usual occupations—what might be called their household duties. Little Bob played on the sand in sublime indifference, waiting for his mother to prepare some soaked biscuit for him. Susan was overcome by grief and anxiety as she thought of the distress and want which her child might not have the strength to endure.