The Man Who Laughs Part I, Book the Second, Chapter XIV - Ortach

In which a beleaguered vessel, caught in the merciless grasp of a relentless storm, approaches the forbidding Ortach rock—a monument of nature’s implacable strength rising defiantly from the sea—and the fate of those aboard balances precariously between crushing ruin and miraculous reprieve. Through the darkness and despair, the tide’s cruel dance offers a slender hope as the ship narrowly escapes destruction, carried away from the deadly grasp of the reef for a second fleeting deliverance.