water; he saw that he must take in the mainsail.  With some difficulty he persuaded Marcia to hold the tiller while he let go the halliards.  The mainsail came down with a run, and the boat kept on with the jib only, though of course at a slower rate.  They were still two or three miles from shore, and the storm increased momently.  They saw Lynn Beach without hope of gaining it, the wind driving them northward.  Neither could Greenleaf run into the little bay of Swampscot.  In spite of his efforts the boat shot by Phillips’s Point, and he must therefore run upon the rocks beyond the Point or make for Marblehead harbor.  But the latter was an untried and dangerous course for an inexperienced boatman, and, grim as the coast looked, he was obliged to trust to its tender mercies for the chance of getting ashore.  The rain now fell in blinding torrents and a blackness as of night brooded over the sea.  Greenleaf was utterly bewildered, but held on to the tiller with his aching, stiffening hand, and strove to inspire his companion with courage.  The boat was “down by the head,” on account of the wind’s drawing the jib, and rolled and plunged furiously.  Behind were threatening billows, and before were ragged, precipitous rocks, around which the surges boiled and eddied.  Greenleaf quailed as he neared the awful coast; his heart stood still as he thought of the peril to a helpless woman in clambering up those cliffs, even if she were not drowned before reaching them.  Every flash of lightning seemed to disclose some new horror.  If life is measured by sensations, he lived years of torture in the few minutes during which he waited for the shock of the bows against the granite wall.  Marcia, fortunately, had become insensible, though her sobbing, panting breath showed the extremity of terror that had pursued her as long as consciousness remained.  Nearer and nearer they come; an oar’s length, a step; they touch now!  No, a wave careens the boat, and she lightly grazes by.  Now opens a cleft, perhaps wide enough for her to enter.  With helm hard down the bow sweeps round, and they float into a narrow basin with high, perpendicular walls, opening only towards the sea.  When within this little harbor, the boat lodged on a shelving rock and heeled over as the wave retreated.  Greenleaf and his companion, who had now recovered from her swoon, kept their places as though hanging at the eaves of a house.  They were safe from the fury of the storm without, but there was no prospect of an immediate deliverance.  The rock rose sheer above them thirty or forty feet, and they were shut up as in the bottom of a well.  The waves dallied about the narrow entrance, shooting by, meeting, or returning on the sweep of an eddy; but at intervals they gathered their force, and, tumbling over each other, rushed in, dashing the spray to the top of the basin, and completely drenching the luckless voyagers.  This, however, was not so serious a matter as it would have been if their clothes had not been wet before in the heavy rain.  The tide slowly rose, and the boat floated higher and higher against the rock, as the shadows began to settle over the gulf.