She was stark with terror, and held abjectly to the rail while the
next swell lifted them upward. He attempted to urge her back to the
protection of the cabin, but she resisted with such a convulsive
determination that he relinquished the effort and enveloped her in his
glistening oilskin.

This had consumed a perilous amount of time; and, swiftly decisive, he
commanded Halvard to take the wheel. He swung himself to the deck and
secured the long sounding pole. He could see ahead on either side the
dim white bars forming and dissolving, and called to the man at the
wheel:

"Mark the breakers! Fetch her between."

On the bow, leaning out over the surging tide, he drove the sounding
pole forward and down, but it floated back free. They were not yet on
the bar. The ketch heeled until the black plain of water rose above
his knees, driving at him with a deceitful force, sinking back slowly
as the yacht straightened buoyantly. He again sounded; the pole struck
bottom, and he cried:

"Five."

The infuriated beating of the waves on the obstruction drawn across
their path drowned his voice, and he shouted the mark once more. Then
after another sounding:

"Four and three."

The yacht fell away dangerously before a heavy diagonal blow; she hung
for a moment, rolling like a log, and then slowly regained her way.
Woolfolk's apprehension increased. It would, perhaps, have been better
if they had delayed, to examine Halvard's injury. The man had insisted
that it was of no moment, and John Woolfolk had been driven by a
consuming desire to leave the miasmatic shore. He swung the pole
forward and cried:

"Four and a half."

The water was shoaling rapidly. The breaking waves on the port and
starboard swept by with lightning rapidity. The ketch veered again,
shipped a crushing weight of water, and responded more slowly than
before to a tardy pressure of the rudder. The greatest peril, John
Woolfolk knew, lay directly before them. He realized from the action
of the ketch that Halvard was steering uncertainly, and that at any
moment the _Gar_ might strike and fall off too far for recovery, when
she could not live in the pounding surf.

"Four and one," he cried hoarsely. And then immediately after:
"Four."

Chance had been against him from the first, he thought, and there
flashed through his mind the dark panorama, the accumulating disasters
of the night. A negation lay upon his existence that would not be
lifted. It had foll