Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/305

Rh coming head on for the pier. The picture seared itself into Brainard's very soul. It hurled him back from his glad world regained to the station where he ought to be. But he waited to see if she could clear the pier. In an agony of impatience he crawled out where the sea was breaking clean over the structure, far beyond where Brown dared to follow.

He watched the doomed vessel wallow as she fled before the "norther," watched her lunge past the end of the pier, hardly more than a hundred yards away. By the rifting moonlight he could see that her decks were a tangle of wreckage, her headsails gone or flying in ribbons. She was pelting straight down the coast, helpless to claw off shore, helpless to heave to.

This was what Brainard realized as he groaned:

"She's heading straight for the Point, and she can't be handled to clear it. Or they may be hoping to fetch the Inlet and get inside, and they don't know it's choked up."

As he ran toward the beach, Brainard wondered how he could have forgotten.