Here the cart stopped.

“Don’t unload nothin’,” shouted Polhemus.  “She ain’t fast; looks to me as if she was draggin’ her anchors.”

Captain Holt canted the brim of his sou’wester, held his bent elbow against his face to protect it from the cut of the wind, and looked in the direction of the surfman’s fingers.  The vessel lay about a quarter of a mile from the shore and nearer the House of Refuge than when the captain had first seen her from the lookout.  She was afloat and drifting broadside on to the coast.  Her masts were still standing and she seemed able to take care of herself.  Polhemus was right.  Nothing could be done till she grounded.  In the meantime the crew must keep abreast of her.  Her fate, however, was but a question of time, for not only had the wind veered to the southward—­a-dead-on-shore wind—­but the set of the flood must eventually strand her.

At the track-lines again, every man in his place, Uncle Isaac with his shoulder under the spokes of the wheels, the struggling crew keeping the cart close to the edge of the dune, springing out of the way of the boiling surf or sinking up to their waists into crevices of sluiceways gullied out by the hungry sea.  Once Archie lost his footing and would have been sucked under by a comber had not Captain Holt grapped him by the collar and landed him on his feet again.  Now and then a roller more vicious than the others would hurl a log of wood straight at the cart with the velocity of a torpedo, and swoop back again, the log missing its mark by a length.

When the dawn broke the schooner could be made out more clearly.  Both masts were still standing, their larger sails blown away.  The bowsprit was broken short off close to her chains.  About this dragged the remnants of a jib sail over which the sea soused and whitened.  She was drifting slowly and was now but a few hundred yards from the beach, holding, doubtless, by her anchors.  Over her deck the sea made a clean breach.

Suddenly, and while the men still tugged at the track-ropes, keeping abreast of her so as to be ready with the mortar and shot-line, the ill-fated vessel swung bow on toward the beach, rose on a huge mountain of water, and threw herself headlong.  When the smother cleared her foremast was overboard and her deck-house smashed.  Around her hull the waves gnashed and fought like white wolves, leaping high, flinging themselves upon her.  In the recoil Captain Holt’s quick eye got a glimpse of the crew; two were lashed to the rigging and one held the tiller—­a short, thickset man, wearing what appeared to be a slouch hat tied over his ears by a white handkerchief.

With the grounding of the vessel a cheer went up from around the cart.

“Now for the mortar!”

“Up with it on the dune, men!” shouted the captain, his voice ringing above the roar of the tempest.