"I must have some one, and who better than you? you see the chase?" Can No; she was wrapped in the gray whirlwind. She might be within half a mile of them for aught they could have seen of her. And now Amyas and his old liegeman were alone. Neither spoke; each knew the other's thoughts, and knew that they were his own. The squall blew fiercer and fiercer, the rain poured heavier and heavier. Where was the Spaniard? "If he has laid-to, we may overshoot him, sir!" "If he has tried to lay-to, he will not have a sail left in the bolt-ropes, or perhaps a mast on deck. I know the stiff-neckedness of those Spanish tubs. Hurrah! there he is, right on our larboard bow!" There she was indeed, two musket-shots off, staggering away with canvas split and flying. "He has been trying to hull, sir, and caught a buffet," said Yeo, rubbing his hands. "What shall we do now?” "Range alongside, if it blow live imps and witches, and try our luck once more. Pah! how this lightning dazzles!" On they swept, gaining fast on the Spaniard. "Call the men up, and to quarters; the rain will be over in ten minutes." Yeo ran forward to the gangway; and sprang back again with a face white and wild "Land right ahead! Port your helm, sir! For the love of God, port your helm !" Amyas, with the strength of a bull, jammed the helm down, while Yeo shouted to the men below. She swung round. The masts bent like whips; crack went the foresail like a cannon. What matter? Within two hundred yards of them was the Spaniard; in front of her, and above her, a huge dark bank rose through the dense hail, and mingled with the clouds; and at its foot, plainer every moment, pillars and spouts of leaping foam. "What is it, Morte? Hartland?” "Lundy!" said Yeo. "The south end! I see the head of the Shutter in the breakers! Hard a-port yet, and get her close-hauled as you can, and the Lord may have mercy on us still! Look at the Spaniard!" Yes, look at the Spaniard! On their left hand, as they broached-to, the wall of granite sloped down from the clouds toward an isolated peak of rock, some two hundred feet in height. Then a hundred yards of roaring breaker upon a sunken shelf, across which the race of the tide poured like a cataract; then, amid a column of salt smoke, the Shutter, like a huge black fang, rose waiting for its prey; and between the Shutter and the land, the great galleon loomed dimly through the storm. He, too, had seen his danger, and tried to broach-to. But his clumsy mass refused to obey the helm; he struggled a moment, half hid in foam; fell away again, and rushed upon his doom. "Lost! lost! lost!" cried Amyas madly, and, throwing up his hands, let go the tiller. Yeo caught it just in time. "Sir! sir! What are you at? We shall clear the rock yet." "Yes!" shouted Amyas in his frenzy; "but he will not!" Another minute. The galleon gave a sudden jar, and stopped. Then one long heave and bound, as if to free herself. And then her bows lighted clean upon the Shutter. An awful silence fell on every English soul. They heard not the roaring of wind and surge; they saw not the blinding flashes of lightning; but they heard one long ear-piercing wail to every saint in heaven rise from five hundred human throats; they saw the mighty ship heel over from the wind, and sweep headlong down the cataract of the race, plunging her yards into the foam, and showing her whole black side even to her keel, till she rolled clean over, and vanished forever and ever. "Shame!" cried Amyas, hurling his sword far into the sea, "to lose my right, my right! when it was in my very grasp! Unmerciful!" A crack which rent the sky, and made the granite ring and quiver; a bright world of flame, and then a blank of utter darkness, against which stood out, glowing red-hot, every mast, and sail, and rock, and Salvation Yeo as he stood just in front of Amyas, the tiller in his hand. All red-hot, transfigured into fire; and behind, the black, black night. |