, 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 fir