Page:Moonfleet - John Meade Falkner.pdf/267

 was a sickly wan glow that spread itself through the watery air in front of us, and I knew that they were burning a blue light on the beach. They would all be there waiting for us, though we could not see them, and they did not know that there were only two men that they were signalling to, and those two Moonfleet-born. They burn that light in Moonfleet Bay just where a little streak of clay crops out beneath the pebbles, and if a vessel can make that spot she gets a softer bottom. So we put the wheel over a bit, and set her straight for the flare.

There was a deafening noise as we came near the shore—the shrieking of the wind in the rigging, the crash of the combing seas, and over all the awful grinding roar of the undertow sucking down the pebbles.

"It is coming now," Elzevir said; and I could see dim figures moving in the misty glare from the blue light; and then, just as the Aurungzebe was making fair for the signal, a monstrous combing sea pooped her and washed us both from the wheel, forward in a swirling flood. We grasped at anything we could, and so brought up bruised and half drowned in the forechains; but as the wheel ran free, another sea struck her and slewed her round. There was a second while the water seemed over, under, and on every side, and then the Aurungzebe went broadside on Moonfleet beach, with a noise like thunder and a blow that stunned us.

I have seen ships come ashore in that same place before and since, and bump on and off with every wave, till the stout balks could stand the pounding no more and parted. But 'twas not so with our poor brig, for after that first fearful shock she never moved again,