I looked and saw the figures of the men hauling on the lee main-braces.
The yards swung round; the vessel's head paid off; they squared away forward, and in a few minutes her stern was at us, and she went away solemnly, rolling and plunging; the main top-gallant sail being sheeted home and the yard hoisted as she surged forward on her course.
We remained staring after her—no one speaking—no one believing in the reality of what he beheld.
Of all the trials that had befallen us, this was the worst.
Of all the terrible, cruel disappointments that can afflict suffering people, none, none in all the hideous catalogue, is more deadly, more unendurable, more frightful to endure than that which it was our doom then to feel. To witness our salvation at hand and then to miss it; to have been buoyed up with hope unspeakable; to taste in the promise of rescue the joy of renovated life; to believe that our suffering was at an end, and that in a short time we should be among sympathetic rescuers, looking back with shudders upon the perils from which we had been snatched—to have felt all this, and then to be deceived!
I thought my heart would burst. I tried to speak, but my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth.
When the steward saw that we were abandoned, he uttered a loud scream and rushed headlong down into the cuddy.
I took no notice of him.
Cornish ran from the wheel, and springing on to the rail, shook his fist at the departing vessel, raving, and cursing her with horrible, blasphemous words, black in the face with his mad and useless rage.
The boatswain took his place and grasped the wheel, never speaking a word.