"She's breaking up!"
Rose seized Mason's arm in a frenzy of horror.
"O God! can't somebody help them?"
"They're out of reach!" said Mason solemnly. And then the throng was
silent.
"They are building a raft!" shouted a man with a glass, speaking at
intervals for the information of all. "One man is tying a rope to
planks; ... he is helping the other men; ... he has his little raft
nearly ready; ... they are crawling toward him--"
"Oh, see them!" exclaimed Rose. "Oh, the brave men! There! they are
gone--the vessel has broken up."
On the wave nothing now lived but a yellow spread of lumber; the glass
revealed no living thing.
Mason turned to Rose with a grave and tender look.
"You have seen human beings engulfed like flies--"
"No! no! There they are!" shouted a hundred voices, as if in answer to
Mason's thought.
Thereafter the whole great city seemed to be watching those specks of
human life, drifting toward almost certain death upon the breakwater
of the south shore. For miles the beach was clustered black with
people. They stood there, it seemed for hours, watching the slow
approach of that tiny raft. Again and again the waves swept over it,
and each time that indomitable man rose from the flood and was seen to
pull his companions aboard.
Other vessels drifted upon the rocks. Other steamers rolled heavily
around the long breakwater, but nothing now distracted the gaze of the
multitude from this appalling and amazing struggle against death.
Nothing? No; once and only once did the onlookers shift their intent
gaze, and that was when a vessel passed the breakwater and went
sailing toward the south through the fleet of anchored, straining,
agonized ships. At first no one paid much attention to this late-comer
till Mason lifted his voice.
"By Heaven, the man is _sailing_!"
It was true; steady, swift, undeviating, the vessel headed through the
fleet. She did not drift nor wander nor hesitate. She sailed as if the
helmsman, with set teeth, were saying:--
"By God! If I must die on the rocks, I'll go to my death the captain
of my vessel!"
And so with wheel in his hand and epic oaths in his mouth, he sailed
directly into the long row of spiles, over which the waves ran like
hell-hounds; where half a score of wrecks lay already churning into
fragments in the awful tumult.
The sailing vessel seemed not to waver, nor seek nor dodge--seemed
rather to choose the most deadly battle-place of waves and wall.
"God! but that's magnificent of him!" Mason said to himself.
Rose held her breath, her face white and set with horror.
"Oh, must he die?"
"There is no hope for him. She will strike in a moment--she
strikes!--she is gone!"
The vessel entered the gray confusion of the breakers and struck the
piles like a battering-ram; the waves buried her from sight; then the
recoil flung her back; for the first time she swung broadside to the
storm. The work of the helmsman was over. She reeled--resisted an
instant, then submitted to her fate, crumbled against the pitiless
wall like paper, and thereafter was lost to sight.
This dramatic and terrible scene had held the attention of the
onlookers--once more they searched for the tiny raft. It was nearing
the lake wall at another furious point of contact. An innumerable
crowd spread like a black robe over the shore, waiting to see the tiny
float strike.
A hush fell over every voice. Each soul was solemn as if facing the
Maker of the world. Out on the point, just where the doomed sailors
seemed like to strike, there was a little commotion. A tiny figure was
seen perched on one of the spiles. Each wave, as it towered above him,
seemed ready to sweep him away, but each time he bowed his head and
seemed to sweep through the gray wall. He was a negro, and he held a
rope in his hands.
As they comprehended his danger the crowd cheered him, but in the
thunder of the surf no human voice could avail. The bold negro could
not cry out, he could only motion; but the brave man on the raft saw
his purpose--he was alone with the shipwrecked ones.
In they came, lifted and hurled by a prodigious swell. They struck the
wall just beneath the negro and disappeared beneath the waves.
All seemed over, and some of the spectators fell weeping; others
turned away.
Suddenly the indomitable commander of the raft rose, then his
companions, and then it was perceived that he had bound them all to
the raft.
The negro flung his rope and one man caught at it, but it was swept
out of reach on a backward-leaping billow. Again they came in, their
white, strained, set faces and wild eyes turned to the intrepid
rescuer. Again they struck, and this time the negro caught and held
one of the sailors, held him while the foam fell away, and the
succeeding wave swept him over the spiles to safety. Again the
resolute man flung his noose and caught the second sailor, whose rope
was cut by the leader, the captain, who was last to be saved.
As the negro came back, dragging his third man over the wall, a mighty
cry went up, a strange, faint, multitudinous cry, and the negro was
swallowed up in the multitude.
Mason turned to Rose and spoke: "Sometimes men seem to be worth
while!"