It was a terrible eventuality to consider! Presently, however, the moon rose; and, although the wind did not abate its force one jot, nor did the sea subside, still, it was more consoling to see where they were going than to be hurled on destruction unawares.
Eric was peering out over the weather side of the boat, when, all of a sudden, on the starboard bow, he could plainly distinguish the island, looking like a large heavy flat mass lifting itself out of the sea.
"There it is!" he cried out to Fritz, who at once looked up, rising a little from the thwart on which he had been lying.
"Where ?" "To your right, old fellow; but, still ahead.

Now, we must see whether we can make the boat go our way, instead of her own.

Do you think you could manage to haul up the jib by yourself?
Take a half-turn round one of the thwarts with the bight of the halliards, so that it shall not slip." Fritz did what was requested; when Eric, keeping the boat's head off the wind, sang out to his brother to "hoist away." The effect was instantaneous, for the boat quivered to her keel, as if she had scraped over a rock in the ocean, and then made a frantic plunge forwards that sent her bows under.
"Gently, boat, gently," said Eric, bringing her head up again to the wind, upon which she heeled over till her gunwale was nearly submerged, but she now raced along more evenly.

"Sit over to windward as much as you can," he called out to Fritz, shifting his own position as he spoke.
Almost before they were aware of it, they were careering past the western headland of the bay, when Eric, by a sudden turn of his steering oar, brought the bows of the whale-boat to bear towards the beach.

The little craft partly obeyed the impetus of his nervous arm, veering round in the wished-for direction, in spite of the broken water, which just at that point was in a terrible state of commotion from a cross current that set the tide against the wind.
But, it was not to be.
The doom of the boat was sealed in the very moment of its apparent victory over the elements! A return wave--curling under from the base of the headland, against whose adamant wall it had hurled itself aloft, in the vain attempt to scale the cliff--falling back angrily in a whirling whish of foam, struck the frail craft fair on the quarter.