"

No answer.

No one on board knew how to swim, not even the sailors--an ignorance not
uncommon among seafaring people.

A beam nearly free of its lashings was swinging loose. The chief clasped
it with both hands, crying, "Help me."

They unlashed the beam. They had now at their disposal the very thing
they wanted. From the defensive, they assumed the offensive.

It was a longish beam of heart of oak, sound and strong, useful either
as a support or as an engine of attack--a lever for a burden, a ram
against a tower.

"Ready!" shouted the chief.

All six, getting foothold on the stump of the mast, threw their weight
on the spar projecting over the side, straight as a lance towards a
projection of the cliff.

It was a dangerous manoeuvre. To strike at a mountain is audacity
indeed. The six men might well have been thrown into the water by the
shock.

There is variety in struggles with storms. After the hurricane, the
shoal; after the wind, the rock. First the intangible, then the
immovable, to be encountered.

Some minutes passed, such minutes as whiten men's hair.

The rock and the vessel were about to come in collision. The rock, like
a culprit, awaited the blow.

A resistless wave rushed in; it ended the respite. It caught the vessel
underneath, raised it, and swayed it for an instant as the sling swings
its projectile.

"Steady!" cried the chief; "it is only a rock, and we are men."

The beam was couched, the six men were one with it, its sharp bolts tore
their arm-pits, but they did not feel them.

The wave dashed the hooker against the rock.

Then came the shock.

It came under the shapeless cloud of foam which always hides such
catastrophes.

When this cloud fell back into the sea, when the waves rolled back from
the rock, the six men were tossing about the deck, but the _Matutina_
was floating alongside the rock--clear of it. The beam had stood and
turned the vessel; the sea was running so fast that in a few seconds she
had left the Caskets behind.

Such things sometimes occur. It was a straight stroke of the bowsprit
that saved Wood of Largo at the mouth of the Tay. In the wild
neighbourhood of Cape Winterton, and under the command of Captain
Hamilton, it was the appliance of such a lever against the dangerous
rock, Branodu-um, that saved the _Royal Mary_ from shipwreck, although
she was but a Scotch built frigate. The force of the waves can be so
abruptly discomposed that changes of d