“How’s the tide?” asked the Vicar.

“About an hour of the ebb,” said Ernie Hockin.  “And the moon’s been up this hour and more.”

Just then the road turned the corner, and the world became a waste of wind and spindrift driving inland.  The noise of the gale made it impossible for anybody to talk, and Mark was left wondering whether the ship had actually struck or not.  The wind drummed in his ears, the flying grit and gravel and spray stung his face; but he struggled on hoping that this midnight walk would not come to an abrupt end by his grandfather’s declining to go any farther.  Above the drumming of the wind the roar of the sea became more audible every moment; the spume was thicker; the end of the valley, ordinarily the meeting-place of sand and grass and small streams with their yellow flags and forget-me-nots, was a desolation of white foam beyond which against the cliffs showing black in the nebulous moonlight the breakers leapt high with frothy tongues.  Mark thought that they resembled immense ghosts clawing up to reach the summit of the cliff.  It was incredible that this hell-broth was Church Cove.

“Hullo!” yelled Ernie Hockin.  “Here’s the bridge.”

It was true.  One wave at the moment of high tide had swept snarling over the stream and carried the bridge into the meadow beyond.

“We’ll have to get round by the road,” shouted the Vicar.

They turned to the right across a ploughed field and after scrambling through the hedge emerged in the comparative shelter of the road down from Pendhu.

“I hope the churchyard wall is all right,” said the Vicar.  “I never remember such a night since I came to Nancepean.”

“Sure ’nough, ’tis blowing very fierce,” Joe Dunstan agreed.  “But don’t you worry about the wall, Mr. Trehawke.  The worst of the water is broken by the Castle and only comes in sideways, as you might say.”

When they drew near the gate of the churchyard, the rain of sand and small pebbles was agonizing, as it swept across up the low sandstone cliffs on that side of the Castle.  Two or three excited figures shouted for them to hurry because she was going to strike in Dollar Cove, and everybody began to scramble up the grassy slope, clutching at the tuffets of thrift to aid their progress.  It was calm here in the lee; and Mark panting up the face thought of those two princesses who were wrecked here ages ago, and he understood now why one of them had insisted on planting the tower deep in the foundation of this green fortress against the wind and weather.  While he was thinking this, his head came above the sky line, his breath left him at the assault of the wind, and he had to crawl on all fours toward the sea.  He reached the edge of the cliff just as something like the wings of a gigantic bat flapped across the dim wet moonlight, and before he realized that this was the brig he heard the crashing of her spars.  The watchers stood