Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 2 (1925-02).djvu/114

boats. All three boats were safe, and, as hasty examination showed, intact, including the small boat that had been relieved of its provisions because of its unseaworthiness.

The Kestrel drove on through the night, under the slowly declining force of the typhoon, now blowing itself out. Food and coffee were served but no one thought of turning in.

The moon rose a little after four bells, flooding the pursuing waters and the deck of the Kestrel. It was full, and the light was clear and brilliant. Renwick and his young wife, on deck again, carefully worked their way to the small boat, where they clung to the rigging of the davits and looked outboard and aft where the long waves pursued relentlessly, like angry mountains.

"What's the matter with the boat?" asked Marian.

"I suppose it's been allowed to dry out too much. It seems sound enough to me, but naturally Hansen wouldn't have said it was no good unless he knew what he was talking about."

They watched it swing. The davit rigging had been considerably loosened.

"Let's get into it!" suggested Marian, suddenly.

Renwick investigated. The canvas boat cover had not been replaced. There was no chock. He climbed gingerly into the boat, and with his help Marian managed it also. Then Renwick again descended to the deck and loosened the pulley ropes and stays so that, with the swing of the level binnacle-lamp in his mind, the small boat might have a wider arc in which to swing and so keep them comparatively free from the pitching and tossing of the Kestrel.

It was a landsman's notion, a mere whimsy. A seaman would have scoffed at it, but, queerly enough, it seemed to work. He climbed back into the swinging boat and settled down in its bottom beside Marian.

The boat was, of course, swung in-board, and being small compared to the larger boats, both of which were chocked firmly, it swung free. Renwick felt that since the boat had been condemned they might make free with it, and he pulled some old cork life-preservers out from under the thwarts and arranged them under Marian's head and his own. It was a weird sensation, lying there side by side looking up into the clear, moonlight sky, relatively motionless as the swinging boat accommodated itself to the rolling and pitching of the Kestrel.

They lay there and listened to the roar of the wind and sea. Both were dozing, fitfully, when the Kestrel struck.

Without warning there came a fearful, grinding crash forward. The Kestrel shivered and then appeared to crumple, her deck tilting to an abrupt angle. In the boat the impact was greatly modified, yet it would have been enough without that shattering crash ahead to have awakened people much more soundly asleep than Renwick and his wife. The masts snapped like pipestems.

The deck stayed on its perilous slant as the vessel hung on the teeth of the barrier reef on which she had struck bow on, while the great following waves roared over her in cascades. They lifted the small boat and tore it loose from its frayed tackle and carried it far forward, as with a tremendous and irresistible heave a huge following wave, overtopping its fellows, lifted the Kestrel's hull and heaved her forward for more than her own length and crushed her down upon the rocks. She parted like rotten cloth as she turned turtle and was engulfed in a mighty whirlpool of maddened water.

The small boat with two helpless wisps of humanity lying side by side upon her bottom, riding free, was