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CHAPTER XVII.
THE LAST RESOURCE.
There was a hole in the keel. A leak had been sprung. When it happened
no one could have said. Was it when they touched the Caskets? Was it off
Ortach? Was it when they were whirled about the shallows west of
Aurigny? It was most probable that they had touched some rock there.
They had struck against some hidden buttress which they had not felt in
the midst of the convulsive fury of the wind which was tossing them. In
tetanus who would feel a prick?
The other sailor, the southern Basque, whose name was Ave Maria, went
down into the hold, too, came on deck again, and said,--
"
There are two varas of water in the hold."
About six feet.
Ave Maria added, "In less than forty minutes we shall sink."
Where was the leak? They couldn't find it. It was hidden by the water
which was filling up the hold. The vessel had a hole in her hull
somewhere under the water-line, quite forward in the keel. Impossible to
find it--impossible to check it. They had a wound which they could not
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