You have heard of ships at the last moment
crying aloud like living things in agony? I heard it then, as the
stumps of her masts rocked and reeled in her, and every plank and
joint strained and screamed with the dreadful tension.
A horrible image--a human being shrieking on the rack, rose up before
me at those strange semi-human cries, and would not be put away--and
I tried to turn, and yet my eyes were riveted on the black mass,
which seemed vainly to implore the help of man against the stern
ministers of the Omnipotent.
Still she seemed to linger in the death-struggle, and we turned at
last away; when, lo! a wave, huger than all before it, rushed up the
boulders towards us.--We had just time to save ourselves.--A dull,
thunderous groan, as if a mountain had collapsed, rose above the roar
of the tempest; and we all turned with an instinctive knowledge of
what had happened, just in time to see the huge mass melt away into
the boiling white, and vanish for evermore. And then the very raving
of the wind seemed hushed with awe; the very breakers plunged more
silently towards the shore, with something of a sullen compunction;
and as we stood and strained our eyes into the gloom, one black plank
after another crawled up out of the darkness upon the head of the
coming surge, and threw itself at our feet like the corpse of a
drowning man, too spent to struggle more.
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