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Helpless they clung to the standing rigging, to the transoms, to the
shank painters, to the gaskets, to the broken planks, the protruding
nails of which tore their hands, to the warped riders, and to all the
rugged projections of the stumps of the masts. From time to time they
listened. The toll of the bell came over the waters fainter and fainter;
one would have thought that it also was in distress. Its ringing was no
more than an intermittent rattle. Then this rattle died away. Where were
they? At what distance from the buoy? The sound of the bell had
frightened them; its silence terrified them. The north-wester drove them
forward in perhaps a fatal course. They felt themselves wafted on by
maddened and ever-recurring gusts of wind. The wreck sped forward in the
darkness. There is nothing more fearful than being hurried forward
blindfold. They felt the abyss before them, over them, under them. It
was no longer a run, it was a rush.
Suddenly, through the appalling density of the snowstorm, there loomed a
red light.
"A lighthouse!" cried the crew.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CASKETS.
168
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