own death accepted, and Captain
Nicholl, well nigh accepting death, lay rolling like loose-bodied dead
men in the boat's bottom, and I was steering when I saw it. The boat,
foaming and surging with the swiftness of wind in its sail, was uplifted
on a crest, when, close before me, I saw the sea-battered islet of rock.
It was not half a mile off. I cried out, so that the other two, kneeling
and reeling and clutching for support, were peering and staring at what I
saw.

"Straight for it, Daniel," Captain Nicholl mumbled command. "There may
be a cove. There may be a cove. It is our only chance."

Once again he spoke, when we were atop that dreadful lee shore with no
cove existent.

"Straight for it, Daniel. If we go clear we are too weak ever to win
back against sea and wind."

He was right. I obeyed. He drew his watch and looked, and I asked the
time. It was five o'clock. He stretched out his hand to Arnold Bentham,
who met and shook it weakly; and both gazed at me, in their eyes
extending that same hand-clasp. It was farewell, I knew; for what chance
had creatures so feeble as we to win alive over those surf-battered rocks
to the higher rocks beyond?

Twenty feet from shore the boat was snatched out of my control. In a
trice it was overturned and I was strangling in the salt. I never saw my
companions again. By good fortune I was buoyed by the steering-oar I
still grasped, and by great good fortune a fling of sea, at the right
instant, at the right spot, threw me far up the gentle slope of the one
shelving rock on all that terrible shore. I was not hurt. I was not
bruised. And with brain reeling from weakness I was able to crawl and
scramble farther up beyond the clutching backwash of the sea.

I stood upright, knowing myself saved, and thanking God, and staggering
as I stood. Already the boat was pounded to a thousand fragments. And
though I saw them not, I could guess how grievously had been pounded the
bodies of Captain Nicholl and Arnold Bentham. I saw an oar on the edge
of the foam, and at certain risk I drew it clear. Then I fell to my
knees, knowing myself fainting. And yet, ere I fainted, with a sailor's
instinct I dragged my body on and up among the cruel hurting rocks to
faint finally beyond the reach of the sea.

I was near a dead man myself, that night, mostly in stupor, only dimly
aware at times of the extremity of cold and wet that I endured. Morning
brought me astonishment an