AS the night closed in, the wind rose steadily, still blowing from the southwest. In Brenton’s kitchen they found a group round a great fire of driftwood; some of these were fishermen who had with difficulty made a landing on the beach, and who confirmed the accounts already given. The boat had been seen sailing for the Narragansett shore, and when the squall came, the boatman had lowered and reefed the sail, and stood for the light-ship. They must be on board of her, if anywhere. “There are safe there?” asked Philip, eagerly.
“Only place where they would be safe, then,” said the spokesman.
“Unless the light-ship parts,” said an old fellow.
“Parts!” said the other. “Sixty fathom of two-inch chain, and old Joe talks about parting.”
“Foolish, of course,” said Philip; “but it’s a dangerous shore.”
“That’s so,” was the answer. “Never saw so many lines of reef show outside, neither.”
“There’s an old saying on this shore,” said Joe:—
       “When Price’s Neck goes to Brenton’s Reef,
       Body and soul will come to grief.
       But when Brenton’s Reef comes to Price’s Neck,
       Soul and body are both a wreck.”
 
“What does it mean?” asked Harry.
“It only means,” said somebody, “that when you see it white all the way out from the Neck to the Reef, you can’t take the inside passage.”
“But what does the last half mean?” persisted Harry.
“Don’t know as I know,” said the veteran, and relapsed into silence, in which all joined him, while the wind howled and whistled outside, and the barred windows shook.
Weary and restless with vain waiting, they looked from the doorway at the weather. The door went back with a slam, and the gust swooped down on them with that special blast that always seems to linger just outside on such nights, ready for the first head that shows itself. They closed the door upon the flickering fire and the uncouth shadows within, and went forth into the night. At first the solid blackness seemed to lay a weight on their foreheads. There was absolutely nothing to be seen but the two lights of the light-ship, glaring from the dark sea like a wolf’s eyes from a cavern. They looked nearer and brighter than in ordinary nights, and appeared to the excited senses of the young men to dance strangely on the waves, and to be always opposite to them, as they moved along the shore with the wind almost at their backs.
“What did that old fellow mean?” said Malbone in Harry’s ear, as they came to a protected place and could hear each other, “by talking of Brenton’s Reef coming to Price’s Neck.”
“Some sailor’s doggerel,” said Harry, indifferently. “Here is Price’s Neck before us, and yonder is Brenton’s Reef.”
“Where?” said Philip, looking round bewildered.
The lights had gone, as if the wolf, weary of watching, had suddenly closed his eyes, and slumbered in his cave.
Harry trembled and shivered. In Heaven’s name, what could this disappearance mean?
Suddenly a sheet of lightning came, so white and intense, it sent its light all the way out to the horizon and exhibited far-off vessels, that reeled and tossed and looked as if wandering without a guide. But this was not so startling as what it showed in the foreground.
There drifted heavily upon the waves, within full view from the shore, moving parallel to it, yet gradually approaching, an uncouth shape that seemed a vessel and yet not a vessel; two stunted masts projected above, and below there could be read, in dark letters that apparently swayed and trembled in the wan lightning, as the thing moved on,
      BRENTON’S REEF.
Philip, leaning against a rock, gazed into the darkness where the apparition had been; even Harry felt a thrill of half-superstitious wonder, and listened half mechanically to a rough sailor’s voice at his ear:—
“God! old Joe was right. There’s one wreck that is bound to make many. The light-ship has parted.”
“Drifting ashore,” said Harry, his accustomed clearness of head coming back at a flash. “Where will she strike?”
“Price’s Neck,” said the sailor.
Harry turned to Philip and spoke to him, shouting in his ear the explanation. Malbone’s lips moved mechanically, but he said nothing. Passively, he let Harry take him by the arm, and lead him on.
Following the sailor, they rounded a projecting point, and found themselves a little sheltered from the wind. Not knowing the region, they stumbled about among the rocks, and scarcely knew when they neared the surf, except when a wave came swashing round their very feet. Pausing at the end of a cove, they stood beside their conductor, and their eyes, now grown accustomed, could make out vaguely the outlines of the waves.
The throat of the cove was so shoal and narrow, and the mass of the waves so great, that they reared their heads enormously, just outside, and spending their strength there, left a lower level within the cove. Yet sometimes a series of great billows would come straight on, heading directly for the entrance, and then the surface of the water within was seen to swell suddenly upward as if by a terrible inward magic of its own; it rose and rose, as if it would ingulf everything; then as rapidly sank, and again presented a mere quiet vestibule before the excluded waves.
They saw in glimpses, as the lightning flashed, the shingly beach, covered with a mass of creamy foam, all tremulous and fluctuating in the wind; and this foam was constantly torn away by the gale in great shreds, that whirled by them as if the very fragments of the ocean were fleeing from it in terror, to take refuge in the less frightful element of air.
Still the wild waves reared their heads, like savage, crested animals, now white, now black, looking in from the entrance of the cove. And now there silently drifted upon them something higher, vaster, darker than themselves,—the doomed vessel. It was strange how slowly and steadily she swept in,—for her broken chain-cable dragged, as it afterwards proved, and kept her stern-on to the shore,—and they could sometimes hear amid the tumult a groan that seemed to come from the very heart of the earth, as she painfully drew her keel over hidden reefs. Over five of these (as was afterwards found) she had already drifted, and she rose and fell more than once on the high waves at the very mouth of the cove, like a wild bird hovering ere it pounces.
Then there came one of those great confluences of waves described already, which, lifting her bodily upward, higher and higher and higher, suddenly rushed with her into the basin, filling it like an opened dry-dock, crashing and roaring round the vessel and upon the rocks, then sweeping out again and leaving her lodged, still stately and steady, at the centre of the cove.
They could hear from the crew a mingled sound, that came as a shout of excitement from some and a shriek of despair from others. The vivid lightning revealed for a moment those on shipboard to those on shore; and blinding as it was, it lasted long enough to show figures gesticulating and pointing. The old sailor, Mitchell, tried to build a fire among the rocks nearest the vessel, but it was impossible, because of the wind. This was a disappointment, for the light would have taken away half the danger, and more than half the terror. Though the cove was more quiet than the ocean, yet it was fearful enough, even there. The vessel might hold together till morning, but who could tell? It was almost certain that those on board would try to land, and there was nothing to do but to await the effort. The men from the farmhouse had meanwhile come down with ropes.
It was simply impossible to judge with any accuracy of the distance of the ship. One of these new-comers, who declared that she was lodged very near, went to a point of rocks, and shouted to those on board to heave him a rope. The tempest suppressed his voice, as it had put out the fire. But perhaps the lightning had showed him to the dark figures on the stern; for when the next flash came, they saw a rope flung, which fell short. The real distance was more than a hundred yards.
Then there was a long interval of darkness. The moment the next flash came they saw a figure let down by a rope from the stern of the vessel, while the hungry waves reared like wolves to seize it. Everybody crowded down to the nearest rocks, looking this way and that for a head to appear. They pressed eagerly in every direction where a bit of plank or a barrel-head floated; they fancied faint cries here and there, and went aimlessly to and fro. A new effort, after half a dozen failures, sent a blaze mounting up fitfully among the rocks, startling all with the sudden change its blessed splendor made. Then a shrill shout from one of the watchers summoned all to a cleft in the cove, half shaded from the firelight, where there came rolling in amidst the surf, more dead than alive, the body of a man. He was the young foreigner, John Lambert’s boatman. He bore still around him the rope that was to save the rest.
How pale and eager their faces looked as ............