Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

38 RAVENSHOE.
When they came to the beach, they found the whole village
pushing on in a long straggling line the same way as themselves'.
The men were walking singly, either running, or going very
fast; and the women were in knots of twos and threes, straggling
along and talking excitedly, with much gesticulation.
"There's some of the elect on board, I'11 be bound," Charles
heard one woman say, " as will be supping in glory this blessed
night."
"Ay, ay," said an old woman, "I'd sooner be taken to rest
sudden, like they're going to be, than drag on till all the faces
you know are gone before."
"My boy," said another, " was lost in a typhoon in the China
sea. Darn they lousy typhoons! I wonder if he thought of
his mother afore he went down."
Among such conversation as this, with the terrible, ceaseless
thunder of the surf upon his left, Charles, clinging tight to his
two guardians, made the best weather of it he could, until they
found themselves on the short turf of the promontory, with their
faces seaward, and the water right and left of them. The cape
ran out about a third of a mile, rather low, and then abruptly
ended in a cone of slate, beyond which, about two hundred yards
at sea, was that terrible sunken rock, " the Wolf," on to which,
as sure as death, the flowing tide carried every stick which was
embayed. The tide was making; a ship was known to be somewhere in the bay; it was blowing a hurricane; and what would
you more?
They hurried along as well as they could among the sharp
slates which rose through the turf, until they came to where the
people had halted. Charles saw his father, the agent, Mackworth, and Cuthbert together, under a rock; the villagers were
standing around, and the crowd was thickening every moment.
Every one had his hand over his- eyes, and was peering due to
windward, through the driving scud.
They had stopped at the foot of the cone, which was between
them and the sea, and some more adventurous had climbed partly
up it, if, perhaps, they might see further than their fellows; but
in vain: they all saw and heard the same, —a blinding white
caldron of wind-driven spray below, and all around, filling every
cranny,- the howling storm.
A quarter of an hour since she fired last, and no signs of her
yet. She must be carrying canvas and struggling for life, ignorant of the four-knot stream. Some one says she may have
gone down —hush! who spoke?
Old Sam Evans had spoken. -He had laid his hand on the
squire's shoulder, and said, "There she is." And then arose a
hubbub of talking from the men, and every one crowded on his