What this shore was, no one had the least idea. For twenty-four hours before the storm, no observation had been taken and no reckoning made; and during the storm, the ship had been driven some hundreds of miles out of her course, so that no one knew on what rocks she was wrecked, or to what land this struggling boat was tending. The wind, that had fallen at sunrise, now started up from another quarter, and blew directly off the fog-hidden land. This soon cleared away all the mist and revealed a rugged, rock-bound coast, more terrific in its aspect than the sea itself. And the sea was growing darker and wilder every instant, and the boat was tossed like a cockle shell on the mad waves. They lowered the little sail to prevent the wind capsizing the boat, and they took to the oars and worked hard through the heavy seas along the shores, keeping as well as they could off the rocks, and watching for some opening to effect a landing. One of the men had a pocket compass in his possession, and he took it out and set it, and saw that they were rowing northward. The sun was sinking down through a bank of clouds behind the land, when the boat’s crew, still striving with the wild waves and rowing northward, saw that they were coming to a point that seemed to be the most northern extremity of some island. “If we can once round that point,” said one of the sailors, “we can get under the lee shore, and may manage to make a landing.” “We must give it a wide berth, then, if we double it at all; the current around that point would suck the boat down to destruction in no time,” said another seaman. They turned a little off and struck out to sea, meaning to give the point with its fatal maelstrom “the wide berth” that their comrade recommended. The sun went down and night gathered, and all was hidden from her view. The boat’s crew labored on through the darkness of the night, the beating of the wind and the roughness of the sea, striving to round that point and get under the lee short of the land. But as night deepened the sky grew darker, the wind higher, and the sea wilder. It was a miracle that the boat lived from moment to moment, through several hours of that dread death struggle, but while they strove for life, they expected only death. They made what blind preparations they could to meet the greater calamity, when the boat itself should be lost. The men were strong swimmers, as well as good sailors and good oarsmen. Some of them took the oars, while others fastened what life-preservers they had at hand on the persons of the helpless women. Miss Conyers objected. “Pray, don’t,” she said. “It will be but a prolongation of the death agony. I had rather drown at once and have it all over, than beat about for hours in this wild, dark sea, and perish miserably at last.”