swer them? I could but
protest: "We are as you; we must face it together."

* * *

Now, I have told you that both the greater and the lesser gates of
Czerny's house were hewn in the pinnacles of rock rising up above the
highest tides, and offering there a foothold and an anchorage; but you
must not think that these were the only caps of the reef which thrust
themselves out to the sea. For there were others, rounded domes of
tide-washed rock, treacherous ledges, little craggy steeples, sloping
shelves, which low water gave up to the sun and where a man might walk
dry-shod. To such strange places the longboats turned when we would
have none of them. Convinced, may-be, that our own case was no better
than theirs, the men, in desperation, and cramped with long confinement
in the boats, now pushed their bows into the swirling waters; and
following each other, as sheep will follow a leader, they climbed out
upon the barren rocks and lay there in a state of dejection defying
words. Nor had we any heart to turn upon them and drive them off.
Little did the new day we desired so ardently bring to us. The sky,
gloomy above the blackening, angry seas, was like a mock upon our
bravest hopes. Let a few hours pass and the night would come again.
This was but an interlude in which man could ask of man, "What next?"
We feared to speak to the women lest they should know the truth.

The men crawled upon the sea-washed rocks, I say, and there the
judgment of God came upon them. So awful was the scene my eyes were
soon to behold that I take up my pen with hesitation even now to write
of it; and as I write some figure of the shadows comes before me and
seems to say, "You cannot speak of it! It is of the past, forgotten!"
And, certainly, if I could make it clear to you how Czerny's men were
forever driven off from the gate of the house that Czerny built, if I
could make it clear to you and leave the thing untold, that would I do
right gladly. But the end was not of my seeking; in all honesty I can
say that if it had been in my power I would have helped those wretched
creatures, have dealt out pity to them and carried them to the shore;
but it was written otherwise; a higher Power decreed it; we could but
stand, trembling and helpless, before that enthralling justice.

They climbed on the rocks, forty or fifty of them, may-be, and lying in
all attitudes, some stretched out full length, some with their arms in
the flowing tide, some huddled