had long passed away, and the deep shadows of the driving heavens cast
the whole into a gloom, even more terrific than absolute darkness;
while the high and beetling rocks, towering aloft in precipitous walls,
mocked the hopes of the sea-beaten mariner, should he even buffet the
waters to reach their base; and the jagged shingles, deeply shelving
beneath the waves, or projecting their pointed summits upward, showed
the crew where the rugged death would meet them.

A little onward, a thousand massy fragments, rent by former tempests
from their parent cliffs, lay at the foundations of the immense
acclivities which faced the cause of their present alarm-a whirlpool
almost as terrific as that of Scarba. The moment the powerful blast
drove the vessel within the influence of the outward edge of the first
circle of the vortex. Wallace leaped from the deck on the rocks, and,
with the same rope in his hand with which he had saved the life of the
seaman, he called to the two men to follow him, who yet held similar
ropes, fastened like his own to the prow of the vessel; and being
obeyed, they strove by towing it along, to stem the suction of the
current.

It was at this instant that Lady Mar rushed forward upon deck.

"In for your life, Joanna!" exclaimed the earl. She answered him not,
but looked wildly around her. Nowhere could she see Wallace.

"Have I drowned him?" cried she, in a voice of frenzy, and striking the
women from her, who would have held her back. "Let me clasp him, even
in the deep waters!"

Happily, the earl lost the last sentence in the roaring of the storm.