The crises they indicated did not exist for her. Until the
wave came in, Carroll knew, the SPRITE, no matter how battered and
tossed, would be safe. Her whole being was concentrated in a
continually shifting calculation of the respective distances between
the tug and the piers, the tug and the relentlessly advancing wave.
"Oh, go!" she exhorted the SPRITE under her breath.
Then the crowd, too, caught with its slower perceptions the import
of the wave. Carroll felt the electric thrill of apprehension
shiver through it. Huge and towering, green and flecked with foam
the wave came on now calmly and deliberately as though sure. The
SPRITE was off the end of the pier when the wave lifted her, just in
the position her enemy would have selected to crush her life out
against the cribs. Slowly the tug rose against its shoulder, was
lifted onward, poised; and then with a swift forward thrust the wave
broke, smothering the pier and lighthouse beneath tons of water.
A low, agonised wail broke from the crowd. And then--and then--over
beyond the pier down which the wave, broken and spent but formidable
still, was ripping its way, they saw gliding a battered black stack
from which still poured defiantly clouds of gray smoke.
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