square-sails of a full-rigged ship.


The men and women must have stood a whole minute--dumb as stones--before
there came that long curdling shriek for which they waited. The great
masts quivered for a second against the darkness; then heaved, lurched,
and reeled down, crashing on the Raney.


CHAPTER III.


THE STRANGER.

As the ship struck, night closed down again, and her agony, sharp or
lingering, was blotted out. There was no help possible; no arm that
could throw across the three hundred yards that separated her from the
cliffs; no swimmer that could carry a rope across those breakers; nor
any boat that could, with a chance of life, put out among them. Now and
then a dull crash divided the dark hours, but no human cry again reached
the shore.

Day broke on a grey sea still running angrily, a tired and shivering
group upon the beach, and on the near side of the Raney a shapeless
fragment, pounded and washed to and fro--a relic on which the watchers
could in their minds re-build the tragedy.

The Raney presents a sheer edge to seaward--an edge under which the
first vessel, though almost grazing her side, had driven in plenty of
water. Shorewards, however, it descends by gradual ledges.