Everyone felt great awe as they realised that, as if by a miracle, the ship had found the harbour even though a dead man was steering it! However, everything had happened more quickly than it takes to write these words. The ship did not slow down. It rushed across the harbour, and threw itself on that accumulation of sand and gravel pushed by many tides and many storms into the southeast corner of the pier under the East Cliff. This place is known to local people as Tate Hill Pier.

Of course there was a powerful impact as the vessel drove into the sand heap. Every plank, rope, and spar was strained. Some of the upper sails came crashing down. But the strangest thing of all happened the moment the ship touched the shore. An immense dog sprang up on deck from below, as if shot out of the ship when it hit the shore. It ran forward, and jumped from the bow on to the sand.

It ran straight for the steep cliff, where the churchyard hangs steeply over the lane to the East Pier. (In fact some of the flat tombstones are partly in the air, where the cliff below them has fallen away.) The dog disappeared in the darkness, which seemed even darker just beyond the focus of the searchlight.

Vocabulary:

Awe: Surprise and wonder
Accumulation: Things gathered together
Gravel: Small broken rocks
Spar: Part of the ship's mast
Immense: Very big
Bow: The front of a ship
Lane: A small road
Tombstone: A stone telling who is buried below it