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The Matutina drifted like a cork at the mercy of the waves. She sailed no longer she merely floated. Every moment she seemed about to turn over on her back, like a dead fish. The good condition and perfectly water-tight state of the hull alone saved her from this disaster. Below the water-line not a plank had started.

"Matutina ligat Christum qui crimina purgat, Prima replet sputis. Causam dat Tertia mortis. Sexta cruci nectit. Latus ejus Nona bipertit. Vespera deponit. Tumulo completa reponit. Haec sunt septenis propter quae psallimus horas." "At Matins bound; at Prime reviled; Condemned to death at Tierce; Nailed to the Cross at Sext; at None His blessed Side they pierce.

The winds are a charge of Cossacks: stand your ground and they disperse. Calms are the pincers of the executioner. The water, deliberate and sure, irrepressible and heavy, rose in the hold, and as it rose the vessel sank it was happening slowly. Those on board the wreck of the Matutina felt that most hopeless of catastrophes an inert catastrophe undermining them.

The wave dashed the hooker against the rock. Then came the shock. It came under the shapeless cloud of foam which always hides such catastrophes. When this cloud fell back into the sea, when the waves rolled back from the rock, the six men were tossing about the deck, but the Matutina was floating alongside the rock clear of it.

The captain passed every minute from the binnacle to the standard compass, taking the bearings of objects on shore. The Matutina had at first a soldier's wind which was not unfavourable, though she could not lie within five points of her course.

The chief and the captain parted, each reverting to his own meditation, and a little while afterwards the Matutina left the gulf. Now came the great rolling of the open sea. The ocean in the spaces between the foam was slimy in appearance. The waves, seen through the twilight in indistinct outline, somewhat resembled plashes of gall.

Again was the hooker running with the shadow into immeasurable darkness. The Matutina, escaped from the Caskets, sank and rose from billow to billow. A respite, but in chaos. Spun round by the wind, tossed by all the thousand motions of the wave, she reflected every mad oscillation of the sea. She scarcely pitched at all a terrible symptom of a ship's distress. Wrecks merely roll.

It certainly was no time to sail. Yet the hooker had sailed. She had made the south of the cape. She was already out of the gulf, and in the open sea. Suddenly there came a gust of wind. The Matutina, which was still clearly in sight, made all sail, as if resolved to profit by the hurricane. It was the nor'-wester, a wind sullen and angry. Its weight was felt instantly.

For them it is a natural and beautiful way of telling the glory of Him who is the Dayspring from on high, who is the Light to lighten the Gentiles, whose Mother is the Stella Matutina, whose people once walked in darkness and now have seen a great Light. It is their answer the reflection in the depths of their sea to the myriad lights of that heaven which shines over Lourdes.

Had a local pilot been on board the Matutina, he could have warned them of their fresh peril. In place of a pilot, they had their instinct. In situations of extreme danger men are endowed with second sight. High contortions of foam were flying along the coast in the frenzied raid of the wind. It was the spitting of the race. Many a bark has been swamped in that snare.