CHAPTER XIV.
ORTACH.
The reef reappeared. After the Caskets comes Ortach. The storm is noartist; brutal and all-powerful, it never varies its appliances. Thedarkness is inexhaustible. Its snares and perfidies never come to anend. As for man, he soon comes to the bottom of his resources. Manexpends his strength, the abyss never.
The shipwrecked men turned towards the chief, their hope. He could onlyshrug his shoulders. Dismal contempt of helplessness.
A pavement in the midst of the ocean--such is the Ortach rock. TheOrtach, all of a piece, rises up in a straight line to eighty feet abovethe angry beating of the waves. Waves and ships break against it. Animmovable cube, it plunges its rectilinear planes apeak into thenumberless serpentine curves of the sea.
At night it stands an enormous block resting on the folds of a hugeblack sheet. In time of storm it awaits the stroke of the axe, which isthe thunder-clap.
But there is never a thunder-clap during the snowstorm. True, the shiphas the bandage round her eyes; darkness is knotted about her; she islike one prepared to be led to the scaffold. As for the thunderbolt,which makes quick ending, it is not to be hoped for.
The _Matutina_, nothing better than a log upon the waters, driftedtowards this rock as she had drifted towards the other. The poorwretches on board, who had for a moment believed themselves saved,relapsed into their agony. The destruction they had left behind facedthem again. The reef reappeared from the bottom of the sea. Nothing hadbeen gained.
The Caskets are a figuring iron[7] with a thousand compartments. TheOrtach is a wall. To be wrecked on the Caskets is to be cut intoribbons; to strike on the Ortach is to be crushed into powder.
Nevertheless, there was one chance.
On a straight frontage such as that of the Ortach neither the wave northe cannon ball can ricochet. The operation is simple: first the flux,then the reflux; a wave advances, a billow returns.
In such cases the question of life and death is balanced thus: if thewave carries the vessel on the rock, she breaks on it and is lost; ifthe billow retires before the ship has touched, she is carried back, sheis saved.
It was a moment of great anxiety; those on board saw through the gloomthe great decisive wave bearing down on them. How far was it going todrag them? If the wave broke upon the ship, they were carried on therock and dashed to pieces. If it passed under the ship....
The wave _did_ pass under.
They breathed again.
But what of the recoil? What would the surf do with them? The surfcarried them back. A few minutes later the _Matutina_ was free of thebreakers. The Ortach faded from their view, as the Caskets had done. Itwas their second victory. For the second time the hooker had verged ondestruction, and had drawn back in time.