There is something inexpressibly terrifying
even from a point of safety in these beach combers, clutching their long
arms hungrily for prey. The confusion of orders and {40} counter-orders,
which no man had strength to carry out, of terrified cries and prayers
and oaths--was indescribable. The numb hopelessness was succeeded by
sheer panic terror. Ofzyn threw out a second anchor that raked bottom.
Then, another mountain roller thundering over the ship with a crash--and
the first cable snapped like a pistol shot. The ship rebounded; then
drove before the back-wash of the angry sea. With no fate possible but
the wall of rocks ahead, the terrorized crew began heaving the dead
overboard in the moonlight; but another roaring billow smashed the _St.
Peter_ squarely broadside. The second hawser ripped back with the
whistling rebound of a whip-lash, and Ofzyn was in the very act of
dropping the third and last anchor, when straight as a bullet to the
mark, as if hag-ridden by the northern demons of sailor fear, hurled the
_St. Peter_ for the reef! A third time the beach combers crashed down
like a falling mountain.
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