The afternoon was now wearing on. Since 10 A.M. we had made no headway
towards our port, and when I looked at the cliffs it was clear that
they were getting nearer, and the wind showed no signs of lulling. Our
only hope lay in being able to drift so slowly that the wind might
fall before we struck, and if that did not take place before nightfall
it probably would not till the next morning. Rationally I understood
this perfectly, but I could not feel that there was imminent danger. I
had no presentiment of death, and nothing that I could do would enable
me to realize the real and visible danger.

The wind never lulled an instant or blew a degree less furiously; it
came still from the blue sky, and still we plunged and buried our bows
and shipped floods at every plunge; the wheels throbbed and beat as
ever, and no one moved on deck. The engineers changed their watches
and the captain unrelieved kept up his to and fro on the bridge. I am
confident that of all the men on board I was the only one who was not
persuaded that death was near. My wife never knew till long after what
the danger had been. We could already see that the water beneath
the cliff was a wild expanse of breakers, coming in and recoiling,
crossing, heaving, surging,--a white field of foam, where no human
being could catch a breath. The waves that swung in before this gale
rose in breakers against the cliff higher than our masts. We might go
up in their spray if we reached the rocks, but no anchor could check
our crawling to doom. To this day I look back with surprise at the
complete freedom, not from fright, but even from a recognition of any
real danger impending over us, which I then felt; it was not courage,
but a something stronger than myself or my own weakness; it was
not even a superstitious faith that I should be preserved from the
threatened peril, but a profound and immovable conviction that