The scene that presented itself to him on gaining the deck was indeed appalling. The first grey streak of dawn faintly lighted up the sky, just affording sufficient light to exhibit the complete wreck of everything on deck, and the black froth-capped tumult of the surrounding billows. The rocks on which they had struck could not be discerned in the gloom, but the white breakers ahead showed too clearly where they were. The three masts had gone over the side one after another, leaving only the stumps of each standing. Everything above board—boats, binnacle, and part of the bulwarks—had been washed away. The crew were clinging to the belaying-pins and to such parts of the wreck as seemed likely to hold together longest. It seemed to poor Ailie, as she clung to her father’s neck that she had been transported to some far-distant and dreadful scene, for scarcely a single familiar object remained by which her ocean home, the Red Eric, could be recognised.
But Ailie had neither desire nor opportunity to remark on this tremendous change. Every successive billow raised the doomed vessel, and let her fall with heavy violence on the rocks. Her stout frame trembled under each shock, as if she were endued with life, and shrank affrighted from her impending fate; and it was as much as the captain could do to maintain his hold of the weather-bulwarks and of Ailie at the same time. Indeed, he could not have done it at all had not Glynn stood by and assisted him to the best of his ability.
“It won’t last long, lad,” said the captain, as a larger wave than usual lifted the shattered hull and dashed it down on the rocks, washing the deck from stern to stem, and for a few seconds burying the whole crew under water. “May the Almighty have mercy on us; no ship can stand this long.”
“Perhaps the tide is falling,” suggested Glynn, in an encouraging voice, “and I think I see something like a shore ahead. It will be daylight in half-an-hour or less.”
The captain shook his head. “There’s little or no tide here to rise or fall, I fear. Before half-an-hour we shall—”
He did not finish the sentence, but looking at Ailie with a gaze of agony, he pressed her more closely to his breast.
“I think we shall be saved,” whispered the child, twining her arms more closely round her father’s neck, and laying her wet cheek against his.
Just then Tim Rokens crept aft, and said that he saw a low sandy island ahead, and a rocky point jutting out from it close to the bows of the ship. He suggested that a rope might be got ashore when it became a little lighter.
Phil Briant came aft to make the same suggestion, not knowing that Rokens had preceded him. In fact, the men had been consulting as to the possibility of accomplishing this object, but when they looked at the fearful breakers that boiled in white foam between the ship’s bow and the rocky point, their hearts failed them, and no one was found to volunteer for the dangerous service.
“Is any one inclined to try it?” inquired the captain. “There’s niver a wan of us but ’ud try it, cap’en, if you gives the order,” answered Briant.