We have about three hours still before we run upon the sandbanks; but by that time it will have begun to get dark, and it may be difficult for the people on shore to come to our rescue.

We must steer straight in and choose the likeliest place ourselves; and if you are of the same way of thinking we'll head for the shore now at once, rather than wait to have the old craft flung over the banks in the dark like a dead fish." The crew were silent, and looked anxiously over towards the land.

But when Nils Buvaagen declared himself a supporter of the captain's plan by crossing over the deck to him, all the others followed.
Salve went himself to the wheel, and gave the order to "Ease off the sheet." "Ease it is," was the answer; and that was the last order ever given on board the Apollo.
Running now before the wind, they rapidly approached the land.

Salve stood at the wheel, resting his knee from time to time on one of the spokes, with a concentrated look on his dark keen face, and his eye searching like a kite's along the coast for the place they were to make for.

A couple of times he took up the glass and directed it towards the downs, where a group of people were moving about.
The chalk-white wall of water, rising and falling, grew higher and higher as they approached it; the noise and the dull roar of the breakers became more and more deafening, and a feeling of faintness crept over Elizabeth as she looked towards the land, and began to realise their danger.
The suspense was so painfully prolonged, a mist was coming before her eyes, so that she could scarcely see Salve over at the wheel; and she tried, in her terror, to keep them fixed upon the child in her arms.