THE  LOSS   OP  THE  BRIG.                        115
seas at a great rate, pitching and straining, and pursued
by the westerly swell.
Altogether it was no such ill night to keep the seas
in; and I had begun to wonder what it was that sat so
heavily upon the captain, when the brig rising suddenly
on the top of a high swell, he pointed and cried to us to
look. Away on the lee bow, a thing like a fountain
rose out of the moonlit sea, and immediately after we
heard a low sound of roaring.
"What do ye call that?" asked the captain,
gloomily.
"The sea breaking on a reef," said Alan. "And
now ye ken where it is; and what better would ye
have?"
"Ay," said Hoseason, "if it was the only one."
And sure enough just as he spoke there came a
second fountain further to the south.
"There!" said Hoseason. "Ye see for yourself. If
I had kent of these reefs, if I had had a chart, or if
Shuan had been spared, it's not sixty guineas, no, nor
six hundred, would have made me risk my brig in sic a
stoneyard! But you, sir, that was to pilot us, have ye
never a word?"
"I'm thinking," said Alan, "these'll be what they
call the Torran Rocks."
"Are there many of them? "says the captain.
"Truly, sir, I am nae pilot," said Alan; "but it
sticks in my mind there are ten miles of them."
Mr. Riach and the captain looked at each other.
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