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ruin. The rebound was so violent that it had shattered the rudder pendants; the rudder itself hung unhinged and flapping. The rock had driven in her keel. Round about the vessel nothing was visible except a thick, compact fog, now become sombre. Night was gathering fast. The Durande plunged forward. It was like the effort of a horse pierced through the entrails by the horns of a bull. All was over with her. Tangrouille was sobered. Nobody is drunk in the moment of a shipwreck. He came down to the quarter-deck, went up again, and said: "Captain, the water is gaining rapidly in the hold. In ten minutes it will be up to the scupper-holes." The passengers ran about bewildered, wringing their hands, leaning over the bulwarks, looking down in the engine-room, and making every other sort of useless movement in their terror. The tourist had fainted. Clubin made a sign with his hand, and they were silent. He questioned Imbrancam: "How long will the engines work yet?" "Five or six minutes, sir." Then he interrogated the Guernsey passenger: "I was at the helm. You saw the rock. On which bank of the Hanways are we?" "On the Mauve. Just now, in the opening in the fog, I saw it clearly." "If we're on the Mauve," remarked Clubin, "we have the Great Hanway on the port side, and the Little Hanway on the starboard bow; we are a mile from the shore." The crew and passengers listened, fixing their eyes anxiously and attentively on the captain. Lightening the ship would have been of no avail, and indeed would have been hardly possible. In order to throw the cargo overboard, they would have had to open the ports and increase the chance of the water entering. To cast anchor would have been equally useless: they were stuck fast. Besides, with such a bottom for the anchor to drag, the chain would probably have fouled. The engines not being injured, and being workable while the fires were not extinguished, that is to say, for a few minutes longer, they could have made an effort, by help of steam and her paddles, to turn her astern off the rocks; but if they had succeeded, they must have settled down immediately. The rock, indeed, in some degree stopped the breach and prevented the entrance of the water. It was at least an obstacle; while the hole once freed, it would have been impossible to stop the leak or to work the pumps. To snatch a poniard from a wound in the heart is instant death to the victim. To free the
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