The buoy had travelled out safely and the half-frozen workers ashore
had seen the Keeper disengage himself and clamber into the maintop.
They had also seen him help one of the crew into the buoy and had
received the signal--jerks on the rope--to haul away.
Hauling away with a will they brought to the top of the dune,
half-drowned by the upleaping surf as he was borne shoreward, a sailor,
one of the forecastle crowd. Two men picked him up and carried him to
the house.
As they cleared the buoy for the trip out Dick Hand came forward to
take his place in it. He put himself in, first one leg then the other,
and shouted: “All fast!”
They began hauling him out.
Out he went, not rapidly, out over the dark and frightful tangle
of waters that flooded the smooth beach below him. He was facing
shoreward. The moment his feet left the edge of the dune he was, to all
intents and purposes, in the midst of an immense void, a bottomless
region of water and blackness and cutting, stinging wind without
landmark or landfall, terrible, thunderous, and empty of anything but
sound. Beneath him the stout strength of the buoy bore him up. That, at
least, was tangible. It was as if he rode slowly through chaos on an
invisible steed, winged, at home in the air.
A little way and then a great wall of water coming unseen out of the
darkness rose and curved and fell upon him. One instant he sensed its
black, glittering height at his back, the next he was in the midst
of it, as submerged as though he had been a thousand fathoms below
the immense Atlantic; an instant later he was free of the barrier,
drenched, drowning, water running off him in streams--riding slowly
seaward, riding slowly on.
The line carrying the breeches buoy was as taut as it was possible to
make it but inevitably it sagged in the middle, especially when the
buoy was bearing a man’s weight. For a part of his journey Dick was
under water almost continuously. He had to hold his breath and draw
breath as cautiously as a swimmer in a heavy sea. The impact of waves
bruised and shook him, the roar of the water deafened him. He could see
neither ship nor shore. He grew doubtful, almost, of his own existence.
Still he rode on.
As he neared the ship he was lifted above the angry flood that seethed
about the vessel. Now he went forward more slowly, for he had to be
hauled not only out but upward. Eventually he found himself hard upon
the ship’s maintop, her torn rigging, singing deep bass notes in the
wind, all about him. A little farther, a little farther, yet a little
more and he was able to reach out his hand and clutch a ratline. A
moment more and he was struggling to get his feet on the tiny platform
of the top, Tom’s hand was under his shoulders, and Tom’s voice was in
his ear.
“Fine work! Good boy! You’re just....” That much Tom’s voice managed to
get to him above the awful noise.