She swung round.The masts bent like whips; crack went the fore-sail like a cannon.What matter? Within two hundred yards of them was the Spaniard; in front of her, and above her, a huge dark bank rose through the dense hail, and mingled with the clouds; and at its foot, plainer every moment, pillars and spouts of leaping foam.
"What is it, Morte? Hartland?"
It might be anything for thirty miles.
"Lundy!" said Yeo."The south end! I see the head of the Shutter in the breakers! Hard a-port yet, and get her close-hauled as you can, and the Lord may have mercy on us still! Look at the Spaniard!"Yes, look at the Spaniard!
On their left hand, as they broached-to, the wall of granite sloped down from the clouds toward an isolated peak of rock, some two hundred feet in height.Then a hundred yards of roaring breaker upon a sunken shelf, across which the race of the tide poured like a cataract; then, amid a column of salt smoke, the Shutter, like a huge black fang, rose waiting for its prey; and between the Shutter and the land, the great galleon loomed dimly through the storm.
He, too, had seen his danger, and tried to broach-to.But his clumsy mass refused to obey the helm; he struggled a moment, half hid in foam; fell away again, and rushed upon his doom.
"Lost! lost! lost!" cried Amyas madly, and throwing up his hands, let go the tiller.Yeo caught it just in time.
"Sir! sir! What are you at? We shall clear the rock yet.""Yes!" shouted Amyas, in his frenzy; "but he will not!"Another minute.The galleon gave a sudden jar, and stopped.Then one long heave and bound, as if to free herself.And then her bows lighted clean upon the Shutter.
An awful silence fell on every English soul.They heard not the roaring of wind and surge; they saw not the blinding flashes of the lightning; but they heard one long ear-piercing wail to every saint in heaven rise from five hundred human throats; they saw the mighty ship heel over from the wind, and sweep headlong down the cataract of the race, plunging her yards into the foam, and showing her whole black side even to her keel, till she rolled clean over, and vanished for ever and ever.
"Shame!" cried Amyas, hurling his sword far into the sea, "to lose my right, my right! when it was in my very grasp! Unmerciful!"A crack which rent the sky, and made the granite ring and quiver; a bright world of flame, and then a blank of utter darkness, against which stood out, glowing red-hot every mast, and sail, and rock, and Salvation Yeo as he stood just in front of Amyas, the tiller in his hand.All red-hot, transfigured into fire; and behind, the black, black night.
.......
A whisper, a rustling close beside him, and Brimblecombe's voice said softly:
"Give him more wine, Will; his eyes are opening.""Hey day?" said Amyas, faintly, "not past the Shutter yet! How long she hangs in the wind!""We are long past the Shutter, Sir Amyas," said Brimblecombe.
"Are you mad? Cannot I trust my own eyes?"There was no answer for awhile.
"We are past the Shutter, indeed," said Cary, very gently, "and lying in the cove at Lundy.""Will you tell me that that is not the Shutter, and that the Devil's-limekiln, and that the cliff--that villain Spaniard only gone--and that Yeo is not standing here by me, and Cary there forward, and--why, by the by, where are you, Jack Brimblecombe, who were talking to me this minute?""Oh, Sir Amyas Leigh, dear Sir Amyas Leigh, blubbered poor Jack, "put out your hand, and feel where you are, and pray the Lord to forgive you for your wilfulness!"A great trembling fell upon Amyas Leigh; half fearfully he put out his hand; he felt that he was in his hammock, with the deck beams close above his head.The vision which had been left upon his eye-balls vanished like a dream.
"What is this? I must be asleep? What has happened? Where am I?""In your cabin, Amyas," said Cary.
"What? And where is Yeo?"
"Yeo is gone where he longed to go, and as he longed to go.The same flash which struck you down, struck him dead.""Dead? Lightning? Any more hurt? I must go and see.Why, what is this?" and Amyas passed his hand across his eyes."It is all dark--dark, as I live!" And he passed his hand over his eyes again.
There was another dead silence.Amyas broke it.
"Oh, God!" shrieked the great proud sea-captain, "Oh, God, I am blind! blind! blind!" And writhing in his great horror, he called to Cary to kill him and put him out of his misery, and then wailed for his mother to come and help him, as if he had been a boy once more; while Brimblecombe and Cary, and the sailors who crowded round the cabin-door, wept as if they too had been boys once more.
Soon his fit of frenzy passed off, and he sank back exhausted.
They lifted him into their remaining boat, rowed him ashore, carried him painfully up the hill to the old castle, and made a bed for him on the floor, in the very room in which Don Guzman and Rose Salterne had plighted their troth to each other, five wild years before.