He did not finish his sentence, for the stress of the flying seconds choked down his words. Two possibilities they held, and each big with doom. Either the schooner must dash upon the Raney--a reef, barely covered at high water, barring entrance to the cove--or avoiding this, must be shattered on the black wall of rock under their very feet. The end of the little vessel was written--all but one word: and that must be added within a short half-minute. Ruby saw this: it was plain for a child to read. She saw the curded tide, now at half-flood, boiling around the Raney; she saw the little craft swoop down on it, half buried in the seas through which she was being impelled; she saw distinctly one form, and one only, on the deck beside the helm--a form that flung up its hands as it shot by the smooth edge of the reef, a hand's-breadth off destruction. The hands were still lifted as it passed under the ledge where she stood. It seemed, as she stood there shivering, covering her eyes, an age before the crash came, and the cry of those human souls in their extremity. When at length she took her hands from her face the others were twenty yards away, and running fast. CHAPTER II. THE SECOND SHIP. Fate, which had freakishly hurled a ship's crew out of the void upon this particular bit of coast, as freakishly preserved them. The very excess of its fury worked this wonder. For the craft came in on a tall billow that flung her, as a sling might, clean against the cliff's face, crumpling the bowsprit like paper, sending the foremast over with a crash, and driving a jagged tooth of rock five feet into her ribs beside the breastbone. So, for a moment it left her, securely gripped and bumping her stern-post on the ledge beneath. As the next sea deluged her, and the next, the folk above saw her crew fight their way forward up the slippery deck, under sheets of foam. With the fifth or six wave her mizen-mast went; she split open amidships, pouring out her cargo. The stern slipped off the ledge and plunged twenty fathoms down out of sight. And now the fore-part alone remained--a piece of deck, the stump of the foremast, and five men clinging in a tangle of cordage, struggling up and toppling back as each successive sea soused over them. Three men had detached themselves from the group above the cliff, and were sidling down its face cautiously, for the hurricane now flattened them back against the rock, now tried to wrench them from it; and all the way it was a tough battle for breath. The foremost was Jim Lewarne, Farmer Tresidder's hind, with a coil of the farmer's rope slung round him. Young Zeb followed, and Elias Sweetland, both similarly laden. Less than half-way down the rock plunged abruptly, cutting off farther descent.