Mutely, working together on the slight foothold that the maintop
afforded them, the few boards beneath their feet shaking to the
tremendous violence of waves breaking over the decks below, Tom Lupton
and Richard Hand got first one and then the other of the two men on
the maintop with them into the breeches buoy and sent them ashore. In
the rigging above, close to the topgallant crosstrees, were two other
figures. But even as they worked, getting their second man into the
buoy, one of these black huddles that was a man dropped past them and
struck the deck with a noise distinct and apart from the noise of the
general tumult. In the spectacle of that hopeless black clump falling
down past them, in the sound of that blow as it struck the deck, in the
quickness with which the shape was swallowed up by the glassy black of
the ocean, raging with frothing crests, there was something to make the
bravest soul momentarily faint and turn the body sick.
“I’m going after the other,” said Keeper Tom by gesture. And by gesture
Dick inquired if he should go, too. Tom Lupton shook his head. “Stay
here,” he ordered, and started up the ratlines.
From below, fearful and anxious to aid him but feeling the obligation
to obey orders, Dick Hand watched.
The keeper went up slowly, the wind flattening him against the weather
rigging. Dick saw him gain the crosstrees and moving toward the lashed
man begin work with a sheath knife. After some moments the keeper got
the man free. The fellow was so little able to help or move about that
the keeper abandoned an evident intention to carry him down the weather
rigging on his back. He slashed about with his sheath knife, and Dick
could make out that he had cut some sail rope. This he proceeded to tie
about the man, fastening it under his shoulders and knotting a bowline.
Very slowly, very cautiously, working on the weather side, the keeper
began to lower the man to the maintop. It was a perilous enterprise
and was only managed by turns of the rope around a shroud; and it took
minutes. But it was accomplished and Dick received the man safely.
He contrived to get the fellow in the buoy and away while Tom was
climbing carefully down.
There remained now the great problem of the people on the mizzenmast.
The deck was impassable. Not only that, but the ship was beginning
to break up. Her bow had been bitten off raggedly by the sea. It was
impossible to tell where she would split or when. She might break in
twain amidships. In that case the mainmast would almost certainly go
by the board, Dick and Tom would both be lost, the connection with the
shore would be broken, and in all likelihood not another soul would
reach the beach alive.
They had rescued four. There were three on the mizzenmast. A full half
of the crew had certainly been drowned, some, perhaps, going down when
the foremast had broken off.
Something like a miracle happened as Dick Hand and Keeper Tom stood
together again in the maintop, having sent four men ashore.
A wave of unusual height rose up, shone inkily against the blackness
of the sky, curled, and burst, burying the poop deck completely and
falling with all its might against the base of the mizzenmast. There
was a noise of splitting wood and of rending stays that rose above the
loud song of the wind in the rigging, and with a tremendous crash the
mizzenmast fell. By some freak of circumstance it fell straight to
windward, and the wind and some resisting fibres of wood at the point
of fracture retarded its fall. It came down slowly, tearing through
the outer main rigging to windward, the mizzen topmast shearing things
down. For the moment the mizzenmast rested squarely on the main upper
topsail yard halfway out, then as the ship rolled slightly it came
inboard and close to the mast. Dick and Tom, watching anxiously and in
terror, waited to see what it would do. But it had done what it had to
do. There it rested, close to the mainmast, supported by the main upper
topsail yard; there it seemed destined to stay for no one knew just how
long--perhaps ten seconds, perhaps ten minutes, perhaps an hour.
But the inexplicable chance which had broken off the mizzenmast and
laid it carelessly, like a match, diagonally against the mainmast and
close to the maintop had shaken from their lashings two of the three
human figures that had been visible on it and had brought the third,
and only remaining one, almost within arm’s reach of the two rescuers.
There was no trouble getting him free and into the maintop where the
buoy was waiting, empty, ready to give someone a ride to the shore.
He was immovable and partly frozen, lifeless or nearly so. One would
not have judged that there could be much chance of saving him even
if he were got ashore; but that was not a question to take into
consideration.
The wind howled, the sea made an indescribable noise. The two could
just manage to strap the man to the buoy and give the signal to haul
away.