Towards this dreadful spot, then, the four vessels were being resistlessly driven, every moment seeing their chances of escape lessening to vanishing-point.  Suddenly, as if panic-stricken, the ship nearest to the chance gave a great sweep round on to the other tack, a few fluttering gleams aloft showing that even in that storm they were daring to set some sail.  What the manoeuvre meant we knew very well—­they had cut adrift from their whale, terrified at last beyond endurance into the belief that Paddy was going to sacrifice himself and his crew in the attempt to lure them with him to inevitable destruction.  The other two did not hesitate longer.  The example once set, they immediately followed; but it was for some time doubtful in the extreme whether their resolve was not taken too late to save them from destruction.  We watched them with breathless interest, unable for a long time to satisfy ourselves that they were out of danger.  But at last we saw them shortening sail again—­a sure sign that they considered themselves, while the wind held in the same quarter, safe from going ashore at any rate, although there was still before them the prospect of a long struggle with the unrelenting ferocity of the weather down south.

Meanwhile, what of the daring Irishman and his old barrel of a ship?  The fugitives once safe off the land, all our interest centred in the chance.  We watched her until she drew in so closely to the seething cauldron of breakers that it was only occasionally we could distinguish her outline; and the weather was becoming so thick and dirty, the light so bad, that we were reluctantly compelled to lose sight of her, although the skipper believed that he saw her in the midst of the turmoil of broken water at the western end of the mighty mass of perpendicular cliff before described.  Happily for us, the wind veered to the westward, releasing us from the prospect of another enforced visit to the wild regions south of the island.  It blew harder than ever; but being now a fair wind up the Straits, we fled before it, anchoring again in Port William before midnight.  Here we were compelled to remain for a week; for after the gale blew itself out, the wind still hung in the same quarter, refusing to allow us to get back again to our cruising station.

But on the second day of our enforced detention a ship poked her jibboom round the west end of the little bay.  No words could describe our condition of spellbound astonishment when she rounded-to, cumbrously as befitting a ship towing a whale, and revealed to us the well-remembered outlines of the old chance.  It was like welcoming the first-fruits of the resurrection; for who among sailor men, having seen a vessel disappear from their sight, as we had, under such terrible conditions, would ever have expected to see her again?  She was hardly anchored before our skipper was alongside, thirsting to satisfy his unbounded curiosity as to the unheard-of means whereby she had escaped such apparently inevitable destruction.  I was fortunate enough to accompany him, and hear the story at first-hand.