In a
moment the vessel struck with a great shock, and the next instant it
seemed to move with a velocity incredible. "The whirpool! the
whirlpool!" resounded from every lip. But again the rapid motion was
suddenly checked, and the women, fancying they had struck on the Vrekin
Rock, shrieked aloud. The cry, and the terrified words which
accompanied it, aroused Lady Mar. She started from her trance, and,
while the confusion redoubled, rushed toward the dreadful scene.
The mountainous waves and lowering clouds, borne forward by the blast,
anticipated the dreariness of night. The last rays of the setting sun
had long passed away, and the deep shadows of the driving heavens cast
the whole into a gloom, even more terrific than absolute darkness;
while the high and beetling rocks, towering aloft in precipitous walls,
mocked the hopes of the sea-beaten mariner, should he even buffet the
waters to reach their base; and the jagged shingles, deeply shelving
beneath the waves, or projecting their pointed summits upward, showed
the crew where the rugged death would meet them.
A little onward, a thousand massy fragments, rent by former tempests
from their parent cliffs, lay at the foundations of the immense
acclivities which faced the cause of their present alarm-a whirlpool
almost as terrific as that of Scarba.
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