Part 17 (1/2)
”It only means,” said somebody, ”that when you see it white all the way out from the Neck to the Reef, you can't take the inside pa.s.sage.”
”But what does the last half mean?” persisted Harry.
”Don't know as I know,” said the veteran, and relapsed into silence, in which all joined him, while the wind howled and whistled outside, and the barred windows shook.
Weary and restless with vain waiting, they looked from the doorway at the weather. The door went back with a slam, and the gust swooped down on them with that special blast that always seems to linger just outside on such nights, ready for the first head that shows itself. They closed the door upon the flickering fire and the uncouth shadows within, and went forth into the night. At first the solid blackness seemed to lay a weight on their foreheads. There was absolutely nothing to be seen but the two lights of the light-s.h.i.+p, glaring from the dark sea like a wolf's eyes from a cavern. They looked nearer and brighter than in ordinary nights, and appeared to the excited senses of the young men to dance strangely on the waves, and to be always opposite to them, as they moved along the sh.o.r.e with the wind almost at their backs.
”What did that old fellow mean?” said Malbone in Harry's ear, as they came to a protected place and could hear each other, ”by talking of Brenton's Reef coming to Price's Neck.”
”Some sailor's doggerel,” said Harry, indifferently. ”Here is Price's Neck before us, and yonder is Brenton's Reef.”
”Where?” said Philip, looking round bewildered.
The lights had gone, as if the wolf, weary of watching, had suddenly closed his eyes, and slumbered in his cave.
Harry trembled and s.h.i.+vered. In Heaven's name, what could this disappearance mean?
Suddenly a sheet of lightning came, so white and intense, it sent its light all the way out to the horizon and exhibited far-off vessels, that reeled and tossed and looked as if wandering without a guide. But this was not so startling as what it showed in the foreground.
There drifted heavily upon the waves, within full view from the sh.o.r.e, moving parallel to it, yet gradually approaching, an uncouth shape that seemed a vessel and yet not a vessel; two stunted masts projected above, and below there could be read, in dark letters that apparently swayed and trembled in the wan lightning, as the thing moved on,
BRENTON'S REEF.
Philip, leaning against a rock, gazed into the darkness where the apparition had been; even Harry felt a thrill of half-superst.i.tious wonder, and listened half mechanically to a rough sailor's voice at his ear:--
”G.o.d! old Joe was right. There's one wreck that is bound to make many.
The light-s.h.i.+p has parted.”
”Drifting ash.o.r.e,” said Harry, his accustomed clearness of head coming back at a flash. ”Where will she strike?”
”Price's Neck,” said the sailor.
Harry turned to Philip and spoke to him, shouting in his ear the explanation. Malbone's lips moved mechanically, but he said nothing.
Pa.s.sively, he let Harry take him by the arm, and lead him on.
Following the sailor, they rounded a projecting point, and found themselves a little sheltered from the wind. Not knowing the region, they stumbled about among the rocks, and scarcely knew when they neared the surf, except when a wave came swas.h.i.+ng round their very feet.
Pausing at the end of a cove, they stood beside their conductor, and their eyes, now grown accustomed, could make out vaguely the outlines of the waves.
The throat of the cove was so shoal and narrow, and the ma.s.s of the waves so great, that they reared their heads enormously, just outside, and spending their strength there, left a lower level within the cove.
Yet sometimes a series of great billows would come straight on, heading directly for the entrance, and then the surface of the water within was seen to swell suddenly upward as if by a terrible inward magic of its own; it rose and rose, as if it would ingulf everything; then as rapidly sank, and again presented a mere quiet vestibule before the excluded waves.
They saw in glimpses, as the lightning flashed, the s.h.i.+ngly beach, covered with a ma.s.s of creamy foam, all tremulous and fluctuating in the wind; and this foam was constantly torn away by the gale in great shreds, that whirled by them as if the very fragments of the ocean were fleeing from it in terror, to take refuge in the less frightful element of air.
Still the wild waves reared their heads, like savage, crested animals, now white, now black, looking in from the entrance of the cove. And now there silently drifted upon them something higher, vaster, darker than themselves,--the doomed vessel. It was strange how slowly and steadily she swept in,--for her broken chain-cable dragged, as it afterwards proved, and kept her stern-on to the sh.o.r.e,--and they could sometimes hear amid the tumult a groan that seemed to come from the very heart of the earth, as she painfully drew her keel over hidden reefs. Over five of these (as was afterwards found) she had already drifted, and she rose and fell more than once on the high waves at the very mouth of the cove, like a wild bird hovering ere it pounces.
Then there came one of those great confluences of waves described already, which, lifting her bodily upward, higher and higher and higher, suddenly rushed with her into the basin, filling it like an opened dry-dock, cras.h.i.+ng and roaring round the vessel and upon the rocks, then sweeping out again and leaving her lodged, still stately and steady, at the centre of the cove.
They could hear from the crew a mingled sound, that came as a shout of excitement from some and a shriek of despair from others. The vivid lightning revealed for a moment those on s.h.i.+pboard to those on sh.o.r.e; and blinding as it was, it lasted long enough to show figures gesticulating and pointing. The old sailor, Mitch.e.l.l, tried to build a fire among the rocks nearest the vessel, but it was impossible, because of the wind. This was a disappointment, for the light would have taken away half the danger, and more than half the terror. Though the cove was more quiet than the ocean, yet it was fearful enough, even there. The vessel might hold together till morning, but who could tell? It was almost certain that those on board would try to land, and there was nothing to do but to await the effort. The men from the farmhouse had meanwhile come down with ropes.