"If they don't, I wouldn't give much for their chance of life," said Gipsy, as she arose to go; "but don't worry, Minnette—all may be right yet."
Minnette looked after her with a scornful smile. Fret! She had little intention of doing it; and five minutes after the departure of Gipsy she was so deeply immersed in her book as to forget everything else.
As the day wore on and evening approached, Gipsy's prophecy seemed about to prove true. Dark, leaden clouds rolled about the sky; the wind no longer blew in a steady breeze, but howled in wild gusts. The bosom of the bay was tossing and moaning wildly, heaving and plunging as though struggling madly in agony. Gipsy seized her telescope, and running up to one of the highest rooms in the old hall, swept an anxious glance across the troubled face of the deep. Far out, scarcely distinguishable from the white caps of the billows, she beheld the sail of a vessel driving, with frightful rapidity, toward the coast—driving toward its own doom; for, once near those foaming breakers covering the sunken reefs of rocks, no human being could save her. Gipsy stood gazing like one fascinated; and onward still the doomed bark drove—like a lost soul rushing to its own destruction.
Night and darkness at last shut out the ill-fated ship from her view. Leaving the house, she hastily made her way to the shore, and standing on a high, projecting peak, waited for the moon to rise, to view the scene of tempest and death.
It lifted its wan, spectral face at last from behind a bank of dull, black clouds, and lit up with its ghastly light the heaving sea and driving vessel. The tempest seemed momentarily increasing. The waves boiled, and seethed, and foamed, and lashed themselves in fury against the beetling rocks. And, holding by a projecting cliff, Gipsy stood surveying the scene. You might have thought her the spirit of the storm, looking on the tempest she had herself raised. Her black hair and thin dress streamed in the wind behind her, as she stood leaning forward, her little, wild, dark face looking strange and weird, with its blazing eyes, and cheeks burning with the mad excitement of the scene. Down below her, on the shore, a crowd of hardy fishermen were gathered, watching with straining eyes the gallant craft that in a few moments would be a broken ruin. On the deck could be plainly seen the crew, making most superhuman exertions to save themselves from the terrible fate impending over them.
All in vain! Ten minutes more and they would be dashed to pieces. Gipsy could endure the maddening sight no longer. Leaping from the cliff, she sprang down the rocks, like a mountain kid, and landed among the fishermen, who were too much accustomed to see her among them in scenes like this to be much startled by it now.
"Will you let them perish before your eyes?" she cried, wildly. "Are you men, to stand here idle in a time like this? Out with the boats; and save their lives!"
"Impossible, Miss Gipsy!" answered half a dozen voices. "No boat could live in such a surf."
"Oh, great heaven! And must they die miserably before your very eyes, without even making an effort to save them?" she exclaimed, passionately, wringing her hands. "Oh, that I were a man! Listen! Whoever will make the attempt shall receive five hundred dollars reward!"
Not one moved. Life could not be sacrificed for money.