Her new-found happiness seemed to have given the little woman additional vigor.
Perhaps it was because life possessed more charms for her, or possibly she realized that our chances of success must be strengthened by a brave front on her part.
Be that as it may, I only know she needed no sustaining arm in leaving the cabin, though with the staggering floor under our feet I would not allow her to walk alone.
When we passed beyond the confines of the cabin and reached the deck, the scene that burst upon us was really the most melancholy in my whole experience.
I cannot imagine a picture more desolate than a brave vessel going to pieces on the rocks, with the rollers pounding her torn sides, and the forlorn passengers grouped about, waiting in painful and prayerful silence for that summons which may in all probability send them to final judgment.
The yacht was already battered out of all resemblance to the thing of beauty that had slipped so gayly over the waves a short time back. No marine fabric has as yet ever been constructed that could effectually hold out against the awful battering-ram of the aroused sea.
Every object had been broken from the deck and swept away—forward the hull was swimming with water, so that had the yacht slipped from the reef on which cruel fortune had impaled her she must have sunk like a plummet.
I turned an eager gaze toward the shore.
There our scanty hopes rested, and everything depended upon the distance and what lay between.
It was not very encouraging, to say the least—the shore was in plain sight, but between lay at least half a mile of boiling surf, leaping in foamy tipped waves that rolled and surged with resistless force, a whirlpool of wrath.