Having to stoop so low, he put out, instinctively, his arm to where he knew there was a stanchion to steady himself against.  His hand closed on something that was not wood but cloth.  The slight pull adding to the weight, the loop broke, and Mr. Massy’s coat falling, struck the deck heavily with a dull thump, accompanied by a lot of clicks.

“What’s this?”

Captain Whalley fell on his knees, with groping hands extended in a frank gesture of blindness.  They trembled, these hands feeling for the truth.  He saw it.  Iron near the compass.  Wrong course.  Wreck her!  His ship.  Oh no.  Not that.

“Jump and stop her!” he roared out in a voice not his own.

He ran himself—­hands forward, a blind man, and while the clanging of the gong echoed still all over the ship, she seemed to butt full tilt into the side of a mountain.

It was low water along the north side of the strait.  Mr. Massy had not reckoned on that.  Instead of running aground for half her length, the Sofala butted the sheer ridge of a stone reef which would have been awash at high water.  This made the shock absolutely terrific.  Everybody in the ship that was standing was thrown down headlong:  the shaken rigging made a great rattling to the very trucks.  All the lights went out:  several chain-guys, snapping, clattered against the funnel:  there were crashes, pings of parted wire-rope, splintering sounds, loud cracks, the masthead lamp flew over the bows, and all the doors about the deck began to bang heavily.  Then, after having hit, she rebounded, hit the second time the very same spot like a battering-ram.  This completed the havoc:  the funnel, with all the guys gone, fell over with a hollow sound of thunder, smashing the wheel to bits, crushing the frame of the awnings, breaking the lockers, filling the bridge with a mass of splinters, sticks, and broken wood.  Captain Whalley picked himself up and stood knee-deep in wreckage, torn, bleeding, knowing the nature of the danger he had escaped mostly by the sound, and holding Mr. Massy’s coat in his arms.

By this time Sterne (he had been flung out of his bunk) had set the engines astern.  They worked for a few turns, then a voice bawled out, “Get out of the damned engine-room, Jack!”—­and they stopped; but the ship had gone clear of the reef and lay still, with a heavy cloud of steam issuing from the broken deckpipes, and vanishing in wispy shapes into the night.  Notwithstanding the suddenness of the disaster there was no shouting, as if the very violence of the shock had half-stunned the shadowy lot of people swaying here and there about her decks.  The voice of the Serang pronounced distinctly above the confused murmurs—­

“Eight fathom.”  He had heaved the lead.

Mr. Sterne cried out next in a strained pitch—­

“Where the devil has she got to?  Where are we?”

Captain Whalley replied in a calm bass—­

“Amongst the reefs to the eastward.”