Chapter 23 - Page 2

she might tie the child to her breast with a
handkerchief.

"I can't stay with you any longer now," he said. "I am responsible for
the lives of all on board, and must do my duty by them."

"Do your duty, Salvé," she said.

"And so," he concluded, as, trying to conceal his emotion, he stroked
her forehead and then the child's, "you must keep a good heart. When the
pinch comes I shall be at your side, and we shall win through it, you'll
see."

"With God's gracious help!" she answered; "remember that, Salvé."

He strode away then down the deck and called the crew aft to take
counsel with him on the situation. The vessel was rapidly becoming
water-logged.

"Listen, my lads!" he said; "this is a serious business, as you can all
very clearly see. But if we only have stout hearts we may get out of it
yet, at all events with our lives. We have about three hours still
before we run upon the sandbanks; but by that time it will have begun to
get dark, and it may be difficult for the people on shore to come to our
rescue. We must steer straight in and choose the likeliest place
ourselves; and if you are of the same way of thinking we'll head for the
shore now at once, rather than wait to have the old craft flung over the
banks in the dark like a dead fish."

The crew were silent, and looked anxiously over towards the land. But
when Nils Buvaagen declared himself a supporter of the captain's plan by
crossing over the deck to him, all the others followed.

Salvé went himself to the wheel, and gave the order to "Ease off the
sheet."

"Ease it is," was the answer; and that was the last order ever given on
board the Apollo.

Running now before the wind, they rapidly approached the land. Salvé
stood at the wheel, resting his knee from time to time on one of the
spokes, with a concentrated look on his dark keen face, and his eye
searching like a kite's along the coast for the place they were to make
for. A couple of times he took up the glass and directed it towards the
downs, where a group of people were moving about.

The chalk-white wall of water, rising and falling, grew higher and
higher as they approached it; the noise and the dull roar of the
breakers became more and more deafening, and a feeling of faintness
crept over Elizabeth as she looked towards the land, and began to
realise their danger.

The suspense was so painfully prolonged, a mist was coming before her
eyes, so that she could scarcely see Salvé over at the wheel; and she
tried, in her terror, to keep them fixed upon the child in her arms. The