yards away, and running fast.



CHAPTER II.


THE SECOND SHIP.

Fate, which had freakishly hurled a ship's crew out of the void upon
this particular bit of coast, as freakishly preserved them.

The very excess of its fury worked this wonder. For the craft came in
on a tall billow that flung her, as a sling might, clean against the
cliff's face, crumpling the bowsprit like paper, sending the foremast
over with a crash, and driving a jagged tooth of rock five feet into her
ribs beside the breastbone. So, for a moment it left her, securely
gripped and bumping her stern-post on the ledge beneath. As the next
sea deluged her, and the next, the folk above saw her crew fight their
way forward up the slippery deck, under sheets of foam. With the fifth
or six wave her mizen-mast went; she split open amidships, pouring out
her cargo. The stern slipped off the ledge and plunged twenty fathoms
down out of sight. And now the fore-part alone remained--a piece of
deck, the stump of the foremast, and five men clinging in a tangle of
cordage, struggling up and toppling back as each successive sea soused
over them.

Three men had detached themselves from the group above the cliff, and
were sidling down its face cautiously, for the hurricane now flattened
them back against the rock, now tried to wrench them from it; and all