All these minutes--seconds, really,--Captain Joe
stood bending forward, watching where the sloop
would strike, his hands outstretched in the attitude
of a ball-player awaiting a ball. If her nose should
hit the sharp, square edges of one of the ten-ton
blocks, God help her! She would split wide open
like a melon. If by any chance her forefoot should
be thrust into one of the many gaps between the
enrockment blocks,--spaces from two to three feet
wide,--and her bow timbers thus take the shock, there
was a living chance to save her.

A cry from Baxter, who had dropped the tiller and
was scrambling over the stone-covered deck to the
bowsprit, reached the captain's ears, but he never
altered his position. What he was to do must be done
surely. Baxter didn't count,--wasn't in the back of
his head. There were plenty of willing hands to pick
up Baxter and his men.

Then a thing happened which, if I had not seen it,
I would never have believed possible. The water
cushion of the outsuck helped,--so did the huge roller
which, in its blind rage, had underestimated the distance
between its lift and the wide-open jaws of the
rock,--as a maddened bull often underestimates
the length of its thrust, its horns falling short of the
matador.