were only
two men that they were signalling to, and those two Moonfleet born. They
burn that light in Moonfleet Bay just where a little streak of clay
crops out beneath the pebbles, and if a vessel can make that spot she
gets a softer bottom. So we put the wheel over a bit, and set her
straight for the flare.

There was a deafening noise as we came near the shore, the shrieking of
the wind in the rigging, the crash of the combing seas, and over all the
awful grinding roar of the under-tow sucking down the pebbles.

'It is coming now,' Elzevir said; and I could see dim figures moving in
the misty glare from the blue light; and then, just as the _Aurungzebe_
was making fair for the signal, a monstrous combing sea pooped her and
washed us both from the wheel, forward in a swirling flood. We grasped at
anything we could, and so brought up bruised and half-drowned in the
fore-chains; but as the wheel ran free, another sea struck her and
slewed her round. There was a second while the water seemed over, under,
and on every side, and then the _Aurungzebe_ went broadside on Moonfleet
beach, with a noise like thunder and a blow that stunned us.

I have seen ships come ashore in that same place before and since, and
bump on and off with every wave, till the stout balks could stand the
pounding no more and parted. But 'twas not so with our poor brig, for
after that first fearful shock she never moved again, being flung so firm
upon the beach by one great swamping wave that never another had power to
uproot her. Only she careened over beachwards, turning herself away from
the seas, as a child bows his head to escape a cruel master's ferule, and
then her masts broke off, first the fore and then the main, with a
splitting crash that made itself heard above all.

We were on the lee side underneath the shelter of the deckhouse clinging
to the shrouds, now up to our knees in water as the wave came on, now
left high and dry when it went back. The blue light was still burning,
but the ship was beached a little to the right of it, and the dim group
of fishermen had moved up along the beach till they were opposite us.
Thus we were but a hundred feet distant from them, but 'twas the interval
of death and life, for between us and the shore was a maddened race of
seething water, white foaming waves that leapt up from all sides against
our broken bulwarks, or sucked back the pebbles with a grinding roar till
they left the beach nearly dry.