Poor Man's Rock by Bertrand W. Sinclair
page 12 of 320 (03%)
page 12 of 320 (03%)
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The sloop had all but doubled on her course,--nearly but not quite,--and the few points north of west that she shifted bore her straight to destruction. MacRae opened his eyes at last. He was bewildered and sick. His head swam. There was a series of stabbing pains in his lacerated face. But he was of the sea, of that breed which survives by dint of fortitude, endurance, stoutness of arm and quickness of wit. He clawed to his feet. Almost before him lifted the bleak southern face of Squitty Island. Point Old jutted out like a barrier. MacRae swung on the tiller. But the wind had the mainsail in its teeth. Without control of that boom his rudder could not serve him. And as he crawled forward to try to lower sail, or get a rope's end on the boom, whichever would do, the sloop struck on a rock that stands awash at half-tide, a brown hummock of granite lifting out of the sea two hundred feet off the tip of Point Old. She struck with a shock that sent MacRae sprawling, arrested full in an eight-knot stride. As she hung shuddering on the rock, impaled by a jagged tooth, a sea lifted over her stern and swept her like a watery broom that washed MacRae off the cabin top, off the rock itself into deep water beyond. He came up gasping. The cool immersion had astonishingly revived him. He felt a renewal of his strength, and he had been cast by luck into a place from which it took no more than the moderate effort of an able swimmer to reach shore. Point Old stood at an angle to the smashing seas, making a sheltered bight behind it, and into this bight the |
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