Jacynth led a cheer for the gallant captain, which was taken up by the passengers, and seemed to do them an immense amount of good. After this the wonderful quietness once more fell over the doomed ship that sped onward swiftly through the sea that was now as rough as the bos’n’s forecast had pictured. On the crowded deck all was as orderly as if, according to their daily habit, the passengers had mustered to take a look round before going down to dinner. The wind, now blowing what even a sailor would have admitted to be half a gale, whistled shrilly through the creaking spars. The course taken by the ship brought it more abaft, and sometimes a gust blew the smoke from the burning hatch under and across the bridge, choking the passengers and hiding the captain and second mate from view. But for the most part it blew clear away over the starboard side, leaving the vessel amidships and forward clear enough. “Land ahead,” sung out the lookout man; the sing-song voice of the man throwing the lead showed how nearly they were approaching the coast, the outline of which was recognized in the deeper shadow on the horizon. “Half-speed” the captain signaled to the engine room. But the half-speed of an Atlantic liner soon bridges space, and nearer and nearer came the dark line of the coast. Straining eyes looking out from beneath the bridge, could make out the outline of a mountain, at the foot of which nestled the smooth beach that was to give them safety and rest. Nearer and nearer it came, and higher and higher rose hope. Nothing between it and them but the sea, rough enough, but nothing to the majestic liner, even with its hatches full of fire. The water steadily shallowed, as the monotonous cry of the leadsman marked minute by minute the lessening fathoms. Suddenly, even as the leadsman sang out his last record, a crash resounded through every fiber of the ship. The _Danic_ came as suddenly to a halt as if she had run up against Penmaenmawr. The crowd amidships were knocked down pell-mell over each other, as if a giant hand had swept across them at the level of the chin. The captain, leaning against the rail of the bridge on the starboard side, was pitched headlong into the sea. That proved the worst thing of all. The second officer, left in command on the bridge at this critical moment, signaled to the engine room, “Go astern full speed.” That seemed an order natural enough, though the veteran Captain Irving would not have been led into so fatal a mistake. The _Danic_ had run on to a jagged rock which rose like a spear-head out of the sea, and had literally embedded itself in the hull of the steamer. Had the ship been kept head on, it might have hung suspended, the jagged rock serving to stanch the wound it had made, at least long enough for the boats to be launched and everyone to quit the ship.