"No, not outside. Keep that door
closed. It is safer in here. We can do nothing but wait patiently
until the raft fetches up against something solid or grounds. Hear the
waves boiling over the deck? There's a big chance of being swept off
and dashed to bits out there."
For five minutes the raft was hurled forward and tossed with sickening
plunges, as though in a heavy seaway, until its occupants were nearly
prostrated with nausea. Then came a crash and a shock that piled them
in headlong confusion on one side of the room. There was a grinding
and groaning of timbers. One side of the raft was lifted, and the
other forced down, until the floor of the "shanty" sloped steeply.
With a single impulse all hands rushed to the door and into the open
air.
The raft seemed to be stranded at the base of a rocky cliff that
towered directly above it to an unknown height. Against it the mad
waters were dashing savagely. Beneath their feet the stout timbers
quivered with such uneasy movements that it seemed as though the end of
the _Venture_ had come, and that a few more seconds or minutes must
witness its total destruction. Still they clung to it and to each
other, for they had no other refuge, and in the absolute darkness
surrounding them it would have been worse than folly to seek one.
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