Far better would it have been for us to have died fighting for England on her decks than to have perished here." The time passed slowly.

Every minute the Dragon was swept nearer and nearer towards the rocks.
"She will just make that headland," the master sailor said, "and that is all.

Once round it we had best turn her head to the rocks.

If the cliffs rise as here sheer from the water, the moment she strikes will be the last for all of us; but if the rocks are, as in some places, piled high at the foot of the cliffs, a few may possibly manage to leap from her forecastle as she strikes and to clamber up." Scarce a word was spoken on board the Dragon as she came abreast of the headland.

It was but a few hundred yards away.