About that time a new and disturbing sound reached his ears. Hitherto there had been nothing but the unceasing chant of the gale, the thud and swish of the seas, the steady plaint of the ship, and an occasional crash like a volley of musketry when the crest was torn off some giant roller and flung against poop or superstructure. But now there came a crashing, booming noise, irregular, yet almost continuous, and ever growing louder and more insistent; a noise almost exactly similar to distant gun-fire and the snarling explosions of heavy projectiles.
It was the noise of the bitterest and longest war ever waged. Those old enemies, sea and land, were engaged in deadly combat, and, as ever, the sea was winning.
Even while the Southern Cross swung past an overhanging fortress of rock, a mighty bastion crumbled into ruin. It was singular to watch a cloud of dust mingle with the spindrift—to note how the next breaker climbed higher in assault over the vantage ground provided by the successful sap.
A disconcerting feature of the ship’s hurried transit into this unchartered territory was the clearness with which all things were visible above a height of some twelve feet from the surface of the sea; whereas, below that level, the clouds of spray and flying scud formed an almost impenetrable wall.
Taking his eyes from the everchanging panorama, Maseden looked over the side. The foam-flecked water was black but fairly transparent. In its depths he was astounded by the sight of writhing, sinister shapes like the arms of innumerable devil-fish.
At first he experienced a shock of surprise so close akin to horror that he felt the chill of it, as though one of these fearsome tentacles were already twined around his shrinking body. Then he realized that he had been startled by some gigantic species of seaweed. The ship was crossing a submarine forest. Down there in the depths on this January day in the southern hemisphere some mysterious form of plant life was enjoying its leafy June.
But science had no joys for him in that hour. Better the outlook on crag and clearing sky than a furtive glimpse of the limbs and foliage of that monstrous growth.
All at once a cry from the look-out in the bows sent a quiver through every hearer.
“Rock ahead!”
After a pause, measured by seconds, but seeming like as many minutes, the same voice shouted: