Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/273

 came, and higher and higher rose hope. Nothing between it and them but the sea, rough enough, but nothing to the majestic liner, even with its hatches full of fire. The water steadily shallowed, as the monotonous cry of the leadsman marked minute by minute the lessening fathoms.

Suddenly, even as the leadsman sang out his last record, a crash resounded through every fiber of the ship. The Danic came as suddenly to a halt as if she had run up against Penmaenmawr. The crowd amidships were knocked down pell-mell over each other, as if a giant hand had swept across them at the level of the chin. The captain, leaning against the rail of the bridge on the starboard side, was pitched headlong into the sea.

That proved the worst thing of all. The second officer, left in command on the bridge at this critical moment, signaled to the engine room, "Go astern full speed." That seemed an order natural enough, though the veteran Captain Irving would not have been led into so fatal a mistake. The Danic had run on to a jagged rock which rose like a spear-head out of the sea, and had literally embedded itself in the hull of the steamer. Had the ship been kept head on, it might have hung suspended, the jagged rock serving to stanch the wound it had made, at least long enough for the boats to be launched and everyone to quit the ship.