“It sounds like the breaking of wares on the rocks.”
“How can that be, when the sea is scarcely ruffled?”
“I fear me we run a risk, sailing so close to shore,” said the maiden. “I myself heard Fitz-Stephen say that the currents ran strong along this coast of Normandy.”
“Be easy, sister; no danger can befall a night like this.”
Louder and louder rose the shouting and the revelry. The rowers sang as they rowed. And the knights and nobles, who made merry always when the prince made merry, sang too.
But all the while the maiden, as she lay, heard the roar of the breakers sound nearer and nearer, and was ill at ease, fearing some evil.
“Now, my merry men,” shouted the prince, “row hard, for the night is getting on!”
Fitz-Stephen at that instant uttered an exclamation of horror, and wildly flung round his helm. There was a sudden roar ahead, and a gleam of long lines of broken water.
“Pull for your lives!” shouted the captain, “or we shall be on the Ras de Catte!”
It was too late. The treacherous current swept them on to the reef. There was a sudden tossing of the “White Ship,” then a great shock as she struck—then a cry of terror from two hundred lips.