as if driven straight in. Their panting hearts yielded, too, before the
tremendous blow; and all at once she sprang up again to her desperate
plunging, as if trying to scramble out from under the ruins.

The seas in the dark seemed to rush from all sides to keep her back
where she might perish. There was hate in the way she was handled, and
a ferocity in the blows that fell. She was like a living creature thrown
to the rage of a mob: hustled terribly, struck at, borne up, flung
down, leaped upon. Captain MacWhirr and Jukes kept hold of each other,
deafened by the noise, gagged by the wind; and the great physical
tumult beating about their bodies, brought, like an unbridled display
of passion, a profound trouble to their souls. One of those wild and
appalling shrieks that are heard at times passing mysteriously overhead
in the steady roar of a hurricane, swooped, as if borne on wings, upon
the ship, and Jukes tried to outscream it.

"Will she live through this?"

The cry was wrenched out of his breast. It was as unintentional as the
birth of a thought in the head, and he heard nothing of it himself. It
all became extinct at once--thought, intention, effort--and of his cry
the inaudible vibration added to the tempest waves of the air.

He expected nothing from it. Nothing at all. For indeed what answer
could be made? But after a while he heard with amazement the frail and
resisting voice in his ear, the dwarf sound, unconquered in the giant
tumult.

"She may!"