Page:The Great Secret.djvu/233

Rh coming. The darkness swooped down swiftly and the stars shone with quivering radiance, yet still that tempest increased with resistless fury, and the boiling waves broke over the stern and swamped the decks, while Dennis hung on to his wheel.

Could he have cleared that mizzen-mast all might have gone well with them, for she was a staunch, well-tried craft; but no ship, however strongly built by man, could endure for long the tugging, straining and ram-like butting of that mizzen wreckage dragging her back, driving great holes in her planks, with those mountains of fluid pouring over her.

Dennis felt it was a hopeless case after the first stroke; he could only wait and see the end.

About ten o'clock, as nearly as he could judge of the flight of time, the second mast went, and helped onward the work of destruction; they were driving on with all that mass of wreckage hampering them, but the waves were driving faster. He could do no more good with the wheel now for that dismantled hulk, he must look out for himself and try, if possible, to lighten her, so that she might float till daylight.

Leaving the wheel to chance, all drenched as he was and choking with each fresh wave that rushed over him, he made his way from the poop to the main-deck, and, crawling over the wreckage, he reached the carpenter's room, where, after a weary search in the dark, he found at last an axe. Feeling the edge, and finding it sharp, he returned and began his heavy and uncertain task.

He had no dread of ghosts or dead men now in his work, although the night was dark and the overflow