There could be no doubt of it now. Several voices were calling in accents of fearful agony, and above the rest was one wild thin shriek. It seemed to echo in the lowering dome of the empty sky—was such a cry of distress as might haunt one's dreams for years.
"It's from the boat we saw, and they're on the Moar Reef, too surely," said Christian. Then they hastened on.
When they reached the shore they found the sea running high. A long ground-swell was breaking in the narrow strait between the mainland and the Castle Isle. Flakes of sea-foam were flying around them. The waves were scooping up the shingle and flinging it through the air like sleet.
The cries were louder here than above. By the light of Danny's fire it was but too easy to see from whence they came. Jammed between two huge protruding horns of rock a fishing-boat was laboring hard in the heavy sea, rearing with a creak on the great waves, and plunging down with a crash and groan on the sharp teeth of the shoal beneath her.
The men on deck could be seen hacking at the mast to lighten her, and cutting away the gunwale forward to ease her off the horns that held her like a vise. But every fresh wave behind drove her head deeper into the cleft. The men shouted in mingled rage and fear. They tried to leap on to the rocks, but the weight of seas breaking on them made this a perilous adventure, even if the pitching of the boat left it possible.
Christian took in the situation in an instant. Two or three small boats were lying high and dry on the shore. He ran to them, cut away their cables, tied them together in strong knots, slung one end round his waist and passed the other about an old spar that lay close by.
"They're too near for us to stand and see them die," he shouted excitedly above the tumult of the wind.
Mona clung to him for an instant. Then she loosed him with a fervent kiss.
In another moment he had plunged into the water.
The strait was very narrow—sixty feet at most from the shore to the rocks. Yet what a toilsome journey to the man who was wading off with the rope. The tide was flowing and near the top. It never rose higher than four or five feet in this channel. A man might cross it if the swell did not sweep him back.