CHAPTER XXIII.
Towards dinner-time Salve and Nils Buvaagen were standing for a moment together by the ship's side.
The storm had perceptibly lulled, but the weather was still dull and hazy, and the sea high.

Two or three sea-gulls were circling drearily between them and the coast, where they could now see a long line of yellow foaming breakers like a huge wall, rising and falling on the sandbanks, with here and there a mast-high jet of spray from some reef outside.

Although the wind was on shore they could hear the dull thunder of the breakers there, and a kind of dim rumbling in the air.

The next three or four hours would obviously decide their fate.
Neither spoke; each was occupied with his own reflections.

Nils was thinking of his wife and children at home, and Salve of his future.