"Ought to know," asserted Captain MacWhirr. "Hold hard."
They held hard. An outburst of unchained fury, a vicious rush of the
wind absolutely steadied the ship; she rocked only, quick and light like
a child's cradle, for a terrific moment of suspense, while the whole
atmosphere, as it seemed, streamed furiously past her, roaring away from
the tenebrous earth.
It suffocated them, and with eyes shut they tightened their grasp.
What from the magnitude of the shock might have been a column of water
running upright in the dark, butted against the ship, broke short,
and fell on her bridge, crushingly, from on high, with a dead burying
weight.
A flying fragment of that collapse, a mere splash, enveloped them in one
swirl from their feet over their heads, filling violently their ears,
mouths and nostrils with salt water. It knocked out their legs, wrenched
in haste at their arms, seethed away swiftly under their chins; and
opening their eyes, they saw the piled-up masses of foam dashing to and
fro amongst what looked like the fragments of a ship. She had given way
as if driven straight in. Their panting hearts yielded, too, before the
tremendous blow; and all at once she sprang up again to her desperate
plunging, as if trying to scramble out from under the ruins.
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