The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea by James Fenimore Cooper (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📕

reverence: “Had you thought more of Him in fair weather, your case would be less to be pitied in this tempest.”

“Do you still think there is much danger?” asked Dillon.

“To them that have reason to fear death. Listen! do you hear that hollow noise beneath ye?”

“'Tis the wind driving by the vessel!”

“'Tis the poor thing herself,” said the affected cockswain, “giving her last groans. The water is breaking up her decks, and, in a few minutes more, the handsomest model that ever cut a wave will be like the chips that fell from her timbers in framing!”

“Why then did you remain here!” cried Dillon, wildly.

“To die in my coffin, if it should be the will of God,” returned Tom. “These waves, to me, are what the land is to you; I was born on them, and I have always meant that they should be my grave.”

“But I—I,” shrieked Dillon, “I am not ready to die!—I cannot die!—I will not die!”

“Poor wretch!” muttered his companion; “you must go, like the rest of us; when the death-watch is called, none can skulk from the muster.”

“I can swim,” Dillon continued, rushing with frantic eagerness to the side of the wreck. “Is there no billet of wood, no rope, that I can take with me?”

“None; everything has been cut away, or carried off by the sea. If ye are about to strive for your life, take with ye a stout heart and a clean conscience, and trust the rest to God!”

“God!” echoed Dillon, in the madness of his frenzy; “I know no God! there is no God that knows me!”

“Peace!” said the deep tones of the cockswain, in a voice that seemed to speak in the elements; “blasphemer, peace!”

The heavy groaning, produced by the water in the timbers of the Ariel, at that moment added its impulse to the raging feelings of Dillon, and he cast himself headlong into the sea.

The water, thrown by the rolling of the surf on the beach, was necessarily returned to the ocean, in eddies, in different places favorable to such an action of the element. Into the edge of one of these countercurrents, that was produced by the very rocks on which the schooner lay, and which the watermen call the “undertow,” Dillon had, unknowingly, thrown his person; and when the waves had driven him a short distance from the wreck, he was met by a stream that his most desperate efforts could not overcome. He was a light and powerful swimmer, and the struggle was hard and protracted. With the shore immediately before his eyes, and at no great distance, he was led, as by a false phantom, to continue his efforts, although they did not advance him a foot. The old seaman, who at first had watched his motions with careless indifference, understood the danger of his situation at a glance; and, forgetful of his own fate, he shouted aloud, in a voice that was driven over the struggling victim to the ears of his shipmates on the sands:

“Sheer to port, and clear the undertow! Sheer to the southward!”

Dillon heard the sounds, but his faculties were too much obscured by terror to distinguish their object; he, however, blindly yielded to the call, and gradually changed his direction, until his face was once more turned towards the vessel. The current swept him diagonally by the rocks, and he was forced into an eddy, where he had nothing to contend against but the waves, whose violence was much broken by the wreck. In this state, he continued still to struggle, but with a force that was too much weakened to overcome the resistance he met. Tom looked around him for a rope, but all had gone over with the spars, or been swept away by the waves. At this moment of disappointment, his eyes met those of the desperate Dillon. Calm and inured to horrors as was the veteran seaman, he involuntarily passed his hand before his brow, to exclude the look of despair he encountered; and when, a moment afterwards, he removed the rigid member, he beheld the sinking form of the victim as it gradually settled in the ocean, still struggling, with regular but impotent strokes of the arms and feet, to gain the wreck, and to preserve an existence that had been so much abused in its hour of allotted probation.

“He will soon know his God, and learn that his God knows him!” murmured the cockswain to himself. As he yet spoke, the wreck of the Ariel yielded to an overwhelming sea, and, after an universal shudder, her timbers and planks gave way, and were swept towards the cliffs, bearing the body of the simple-hearted cockswain among the ruins.