"Not in the least for myself," answered Harry contemptuously, "but there is another in my charge."
As the young man spoke, the ship suddenly fell off, when, with a crash and a roar like a thunderbolt, a huge cataract of water was borne directly across the vessel, carrying away the wheelhouse with the man at the helm, the caboose, a part of the forecastle, and last, but by far not least, all the boats, which, as Harry had stated, were become loosened in their lashings.
This catastrophe held every man mute after he had saved himself from going overboard.
White and dumb the sailors saw the last means of their leaving the doomed ship borne away from them.
"It's all up with us!" screamed Brand—the first to break the silence.
"We are lost! we cannot be saved! Is it not so?" cried Mary, clinging to the arm of her lover.
"There is no telling!" he answered; "but hope for the best."
Just then the ship falling off yet further, headed directly for that great mass of red lurid light, gleaming like a bonfire of demons through the bleak darkness of the night and the storm.
"Ay, ay, there's the volcano," cried Harry.
"Yes, how like a beacon of hope it seems!" exclaimed Mary.