dashed to pieces. But
the wave lost its hold, swept under the keel, staggered wildly up the
slope, broke in a huge white deafening roll, and rushed backward in
torrents. The brig was between two forces; it struck once, but not
heavily; then, raised by the incoming surge, it struck again; there was an
awful consciousness and uproar of beating and grinding; the next instant
it was on its beam ends and covered with cataracts.

Every one aboard was submerged. Thurstane and Clara were overwhelmed by
such a mass of water that they thought themselves at the bottom of the
sea. Two men who had not mounted the rigging, but tried to cling to the
boat davits, were hurled adrift and sent to agonize in the undertow. The
brig trembled as if it were on the point of breaking up and dissolving in
the horrible, furious yeast of breakers. Even to the people on shore the
moment and the spectacle were sublime and tremendous beyond description.
The vessel and the people on board disappeared for a time from their sight
under jets and cascades of surf. The spray rose in a dense sheet as high
as the maintopmast would have been had it stood upright.

When Thurstane came out of his state of temporary drowning, he was
conscious of two sailors clambering by him toward the top, and heard a
shout in his ears of "Cast loose."

It was the captain. He had sprung alongside of Clara, and was already
unwinding her lashings. Thrice before the job was done they were buried in
surf, and during the third trial they had to hold on with their hands, the
two men clasping the girl desperately and pressing her against the
rigging. It was a wonder that she and all of them were not disabled, for
the jamming of the water was enough to break bones.

They got her up a few ratlines; then came another surge, during which they
gripped hard; then there was a second ascent, and so on. The climbing was
the easier and the holding on the more difficult, because the mast was
depressed to a low angle, its summit being hardly ten feet higher than its
base. Even in the top there was a desperate struggle with the sea, and
even after Clara was in the sling she was half drowned by the surf.

Meantime the people on shore had made fast the hawser to a tree and manned
the halyard. Not a word was uttered by Clara or Thurstane when they
parted, for she was speechless with exhaustion and he with anxiety and
terror. The moment he let go of her he had to grip a loop of top-hamper
and hold