"All we can to save ourselves, Heaven helping us," answered Briant, although even the most energetic man might have despaired under such circumstances, for the storm was increasing in violence.
The gale blew in thunderclaps, as the sailors say, and the expression was only too true. The schooner had lost her mainmast, gone about four feet above the partners, so that no trysail could be set under which she might have been more easily steered. The foremast still held, but the shrouds had stretched, and every minute it threatened to crash on to the deck. The forestaysail had been split to ribbons, and kept up a constant cracking, as if a rifle were being fired. The only sail that remained sound was the foresail, and this seemed as though it would go every moment, for the boys had not been strong enough to manage the last reef. If it were to go, the schooner could not be kept before the wind, the waves would board her over the quarter, and she would go down.
Not an island had been sighted; and there could be no continent yet awhile to the eastward. To run ashore was a terrible thing to do, but the boys did not fear its terrors so much as those of this interminable sea. A lee shore, with its shoals, its breakers, the terrible waves roaring on to it, and beaten into surf by the rocks, might, they thought, prove safe enough to them; at least it would be firm ground, and not this raging ocean, which any minute might open under their feet. And so they looked ahead for some light to which they could steer.
But there was no light in that thick darkness! Suddenly, about one o'clock, a fearful crash was heard above the roaring of the storm.
"There goes the foremast!" said Donagan.
"No," said Moko; "it is the foresail blown out of the bolt ropes!"
"We must clear it," said Briant. "You remain at the wheel, Gordon, with Donagan; and Moko, come and help me."
