Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/248

 Beside him, Jonah Sully seemed to have sunk into a stupor. Still more sluggishly the schooner rose to meet the onslaught of the waves, rolling heavily, inertly. A great length of time passed that was counted by neither hours nor minutes nor seconds.

Chilled, numbed, Varge roused himself and listened. Over the howling of the wind, the surge of waters, the thud and pound and hiss as wave-tops licked greedily at the deck, came a new sound—a long, continuous, sullen, mighty, deep-toned roar—the beat of surf.

He struggled to his feet. A leaden grey was showing in the east and before him loomed out of the darkness a darker fringe—the shore. And as he looked, suddenly, from this fringe there seemed to stream heavenward with incredible swiftness a tiny streak of light. A cry, hoarse-flung, came from his lips, as a dozen little balls burst into coloured fire. A rocket! The schooner had been seen from the shore—by the coast-guard, probably.

And now a white, strangely troubled patch of water seemed to rise up just before him—then a shock hurled him to his knees. The schooner rose, hung hesitant an instant, then dropped again with a grinding, crashing blow that shook her in every timber—she was fast on a reef—and the shore was a quarter of a mile away.

High over her now broke the seas, like ravening wolves sure at last of their prey—the lashings around him, supporting Jonah Sully in his arms, Varge's eyes fixed shoreward through the smother of spume and the sheets of flying spray. How long would the schooner hold together?

Slowly it grew lighter, slowly the eastern grey spread