There were tattered ribands fluttering on the yards to
show where the sails had been blown away, and every now and then the
staysail would flap like a gun going off, to show it wanted to follow
them. But for all we lay head to sea, we were moving backwards, and each
great wave as it passed carried us on stern first with a leap and
swirling lift. 'Twas over the stern that Elzevir pointed, in the course
that we were going, and there was such a mist, what with the wind and
rain and spindrift, that one could see but a little way. And yet I saw
too far, for in the mist to which we were making a sternboard, I saw a
white line like a fringe or valance to the sea; and then I looked to
starboard, and there was the same white fringe, and then to larboard, and
the white fringe was there too. Only those who know the sea know how
terrible were Elzevir's words uttered in such a place. A moment before I
was exalted with, the keen salt wind, and with a hope and freedom that
had been strangers for long; but now 'twas all dashed, and death, that is
so far off to the young, had moved nearer by fifty years--was moving a
year nearer every minute.
'We are on a lee shore,' Elzevir shouted; and I looked and knew what the
white fringe was, and that we should be in the breakers in half an hour.
What a whirl of wind and wave and sea, what a whirl of thought and wild
conjecture! What was that land to which we were drifting? Was it cliff,
with deep water and iron face, where a good ship is shattered at a blow,
and death comes like a thunder-clap? Or was it shelving sand, where there
is stranding, and the pound, pound, pound of the waves for howls, before
she goes to pieces and all is over?
We were in a bay, for there was the long white crescent of surf reaching
far away on either side, till it was lost in the dusk, and the brig
helpless in the midst of it.
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