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Whence had come the succour? From the wind. The breath of the storm had
changed its direction.
The wave had played with them; now it was the wind's turn. They had
saved themselves from the Caskets. Off Ortach it was the wave which had
been their friend. Now it was the wind. The wind had suddenly veered
from north to south. The sou'-wester had succeeded the nor'-wester.
The current is the wind in the waters; the wind is the current in the
air. These two forces had just counteracted each other, and it had been
the wind's will to snatch its prey from the current.
The sudden fantasies of ocean are uncertain. They are, perhaps, an
embodiment of the perpetual, when at their mercy man must neither hope
nor despair. They do and they undo. The ocean amuses itself. Every shade
of wild, untamed ferocity is phased in the vastness of that cunning sea,
which Jean Bart used to call the "great brute." To its claws and their
gashings succeed soft intervals of velvet paws. Sometimes the storm
hurries on a wreck, at others it works out the problem with care; it
might almost be said that it caresses it. The sea can afford to take its
time, as men in their agonies find out.
We must own that occasionally these lulls of the torture announce
deliverance. Such cases are rare. However this may be, men in extreme
peril are quick to believe in rescue; the slightest pause in the storm's
threats is sufficient; they tell themselves that they are out of danger.
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