Down on deck, I caught the sound of running feet, and then the Second Mate’s voice.  He was asking what the devil was up; but I did not trouble to answer him then.  I wanted all my breath to help me aloft.  I knew very well that some of the gaskets were little better than old shakins; and, unless Tom got hold of something on the t’gallant yard below him, he might come down with a run any moment.  I reached the top, and lifted myself over it in quick time.  Williams was some distance above me.  In less than half a minute, I reached the t’gallant yard.  Williams had gone up on to the royal.  I slid out on to the t’gallant foot-rope until I was just below Tom; then I sung out to him to let himself down to me, and I would catch him.  He made no answer, and I saw that he was hanging in a curiously limp fashion, and by one hand.

Williams’s voice came down to me from the royal yard.  He was singing out to me to go up and give him a hand to pull Tom up on to the yard.  When I reached him, he told me that the gasket had hitched itself round the lad’s wrist.  I bent beside the yard, and peered down.  It was as Williams had said, and I realised how near a thing it had been.  Strangely enough, even at that moment, the thought came to me how little wind there was.  I remembered the wild way in which the sail had lashed at the boy.

All this time, I was busily working, unreeving the port buntline.  I took the end, made a running bowline with it round the gasket, and let the loop slide down over the boy’s head and shoulders.  Then I took a strain on it and tightened it under his arms.  A minute later we had him safely on the yard between us.  In the uncertain moonlight, I could just make out the mark of a great lump on his forehead, where the foot of the sail must have caught him when it knocked him over.

As we stood there a moment, taking our breath, I caught the sound of the Second Mate’s voice close beneath us.  Williams glanced down; then he looked up at me and gave a short, grunting laugh.

“Crikey!” he said.

“What’s up?” I asked, quickly.

He jerked his head backwards and downwards.  I screwed round a bit, holding the jackstay with one hand, and steadying the insensible Ordinary with the other.  In this way I could look below.  At first, I could see nothing.  Then the Second Mate’s voice came up to me again.

“Who the hell are you?  What are you doing?”

I saw him now.  He was standing at the foot of the weather t’gallant rigging, his face was turned upwards, peering round the after side of the mast.  It showed to me only as a blurred, pale-coloured oval in the moonlight.

He repeated his question.

“It’s Williams and I, Sir,” I said.  “Tom, here, has had an accident.”

I stopped.  He began to come up higher towards us.  From the rigging to leeward there came suddenly a buzz of men talking.

The Second Mate reached us.