They had struck.

Where, and on what?
Some bank off the English coast probably.
For since overnight they had been able to see nothing, with those curtains of mist.
The men ran and rushed about, their bustle contrasting strongly with the sudden rigidity of their ship.

How had the _Marie_ come to a stop in that spot?
In the midst of that immensity of fluid in this dull weather, seeming to be almost without consistence, she had been seized by some resistless immovable power hidden beneath the waves; she was tight in its grasp, and might perish there.
Who has not seen poor birds caught by their feet in the lime?
At first they can scarcely believe they are caught; it changes nothing in their aspect; but they soon are sure that they are held fast, and in danger of never getting free again.

And when they struggle to get free, and the sticky stuff soils their wings and heads, they gradually assume that pitiful look of a dumb creature in distress, about to die.

Such was the case with the _Marie_.