I Saw Three Ships | Page 4

grey, with just the summit of Bradden Point,
two miles away, standing out above the wrack. Of the vessel there was,
as yet, no sign.
In Ruby's present mood the bitter blast was chiefly blameworthy for
gnawing at her face, and the spray for spoiling her bonnet and taking
her hair out of curl. She stamped her foot and screamed again--
"Zeb!"
"What is't, my dear?" he bawled back in her ear, kissing her wet cheek
in a preoccupied manner.
She was about to ask him what this wreck amounted to, that she should

for the moment sink to nothing in comparison with it. But, at this
instant, a small group of men and women joined them, and, catching
sight of the faces of Sarah Ann Nanjulian and Modesty Prowse, her
friends, she tried another tack--
"Well, Zeb, no doubt 'twas disappointing for you; but don't 'ee take on
so. Think how much harder 'tis for the poor souls i' that ship."
This astute sentence, however, missed fire completely. Zeb answered it
with a point-blank stare of bewilderment. The others took no notice of
it whatever.
"Hav'ee seen her, Zeb?" called out his father.
"No."
"Nor I nuther. 'Reckon 'tis all over a'ready. I've a-heard afore now," he
went on, turning his back to the wind the better to wink at the company,
"that 'tis lucky for some folks Gauger Hocken hain't extra spry 'pon his
pins. But 'tis a gift that cuts both ways. Be any gone round by Cove
Head to look out?"
"Iss, a dozen or more. I saw 'em 'pon the road, a minute back, like
emmets runnin'."
"'Twas very nice feelin', I must own--very nice indeed--of Gauger
Hocken to warn the church-folk first; and him a man of no faith, as you
may say. Hey? What's that? Dost see her, Zeb?"
For Zeb, with his right hand pressing down his cap, now suddenly flung
his left out in the direction of Bradden Point. Men and women craned
forward.
Below the distant promontory, a darker speck had started out of the
medley of grey tones. In a moment it had doubled its size--had become
a blur--then a shape. And at length, out of the leaden wrack, there
emerged a small schooner, with tall, raking masts, flying straight
towards them.

"Dear God!" muttered some one, while Ruby dug her finger-tips into
Zeb's arm.
The schooner raced under bare poles, though a strip or two of canvas
streamed out from her fore-yards. Yet she came with a rush like a
greyhound's, heeling over the whitened water, close under the cliffs,
and closer with every instant. A man, standing on any one of the points
she cleared so narrowly, might have tossed a pebble on to her deck.
"Hey, friends, but she'll not weather Gaffer's Rock. By crum! if she
does, they may drive her in 'pon the beach, yet!"
"What's the use, i' this sea? Besides, her steerin' gear's broke,"
answered Zeb, without moving his eyes.
This Gaffer's Rock was the extreme point of the opposite arm of the
cove--a sharp tooth rising ten feet or more above high-water mark. As
the little schooner came tearing abreast of it, a huge sea caught her
broadside, and lifted as if to fling her high and dry. The men and
women on the headland held their breath while she hung on its apex.
Then she toppled and plunged across the mouth of the cove, quivering.
She must have shaved the point by a foot.
"The Raney! the Raney!" shouted young Zeb, shaking off Ruby's clutch.
"The Raney, or else--"
He did not finish his sentence, for the stress of the flying seconds
choked down his words. Two possibilities they held, and each big with
doom. Either the schooner must dash upon the Raney--a reef, barely
covered at high water, barring entrance to the cove--or avoiding this,
must be shattered on the black wall of rock under their very feet. The
end of the little vessel was written--all but one word: and that must be
added within a short half-minute.
Ruby saw this: it was plain for a child to read. She saw the curded tide,
now at half-flood, boiling around the Raney; she saw the little craft
swoop down on it, half buried in the seas through which she was being
impelled; she saw distinctly one form, and one only, on the deck beside

the helm--a form that flung up its hands as it shot by the smooth edge
of the reef, a hand's-breadth off destruction. The hands were still lifted
as it passed under the ledge where she stood.
It seemed, as she stood there shivering, covering her eyes, an age
before the crash came, and the cry of those human souls in their
extremity.
When at length she took her hands