Then Nehushta returned to the cabin where her mistress lay almost senseless with sea-sickness.  On board the ship the terror and confusion grew.  For a while they were able to beat out to sea until the mast was carried away.  Then the rudder broke, and, as the oars could not be worked in that fearful tempest, the galley began to drive shorewards.  Night fell, and who can describe the awful hours that followed?  All control of the vessel being lost, she drove onwards whither the wind and the waves took her.  The crew, and even the oar-slaves, flew to the wine with which she was partly laden, and strove to drown their terrors in drink.  Thus inflamed, twice some of them came to the cabin, threatening to throw their passengers overboard.  But Nehushta barred the door and called through it that she was well armed and would kill the first man who tried to lay a hand upon her.  So they went away, and after the second visit grew too drunken to be dangerous.

Again the dawn broke over the roaring, foaming sea and revealed the fate that awaited them.  Not a mile away lay the grey line of shore, and between them and it a cruel reef on which the breakers raged.  Towards this reef they were driving fast.  Now the men grew sober in their fear, and began to build a large raft of oars and timber; also to make ready the boat which the galley carried.  Before all was done she struck beak first, and was lifted on to a great flat rock, where she wallowed, with the water seething round her.  Then, knowing that their hour was come, the crew made shift to launch the boat and raft on the lee side, and began to clamber into them.  Now Nehushta came out of the cabin and prayed the captain to save them also, whereon he answered her with an oath that this bad luck was because of them, and that if either she or her mistress tried to enter the boat, they would stab them and cast them into the sea as an offering to the storm-god.

So Nehushta struggled back to the cabin, and kneeling by the side of her mistress, with tears told her that these black-hearted sailors had left them alone upon the ship to drown.  Rachel answered that she cared little, but only desired to be free of her fear and misery.

As the words left her lips, Nehushta heard a sound of screaming, and crawling to the bulwarks, looked forth to see a dreadful sight.  The boat and the raft, laden with a great number of men who were fighting for places with each other, having loosed from the lee of the ship, were come among the breakers, which threw them up as a child throws a ball at play.  Even while Nehushta gazed, their crafts were overturned, casting them into the water, every one there to be dashed against the rocks or drowned by the violence of the waves, so that not a man of all that ship’s company came living to the shore.

Like tens of thousands of others on this coast in all ages, they perished, every one of them—­and that was the reward of their wickedness.