It was well that they had not very far to go, for the boat was weighed down almost to the edge, and it took the baling of two men to keep in check the water which leaked in between the shattered planks.  When all were safely in their places.  Captain Ephraim Savage swung himself aboard again, which was but too easy now that every minute brought the bows nearer to the water.  He came back with a bundle of clothing which he threw into the boat.

“Push off!” he cried.

“Jump in, then.”

“Ephraim Savage goes down with his ship,” said he quietly.  “Friend Tomlinson, it is not my way to give my orders more than once.  Push off, I say!”

The mate thrust her out with a boat-hook.  Amos and De Catinat gave a cry of dismay, but the stolid New Englanders settled down to their oars and pulled off for the iceberg.

“Amos!  Amos!  Will you suffer it?” cried the guardsman in French.  “My honour will not permit me to leave him thus.  I should feel it a stain for ever.”

“Tomlinson, you would not leave him!  Go on board and force him to come.”

“The man is not living who could force him to do what he had no mind for.”

“He may change his purpose.”

“He never changes his purpose.”

“But you cannot leave him, man!  You must at least lie by and pick him up.”

“The boat leaks like a sieve,” said the mate.  “I will take her to the berg, leave you all there, if we can find footing, and go back for the captain.  Put your heart into it, my lads, for the sooner we are there the sooner we shall get back.”

But they had not taken fifty strokes before Adele gave a sudden scream.

“My God!” she cried, “the ship is going down!”

She had settled lower and lower in the water, and suddenly with a sound of rending planks she thrust down her bows like a diving water-fowl, her stern flew up into the air, and with a long sucking noise she shot down swifter and swifter until the leaping waves closed over her high poop lantern.  With one impulse the boat swept round again and made backwards as fast as willing arms could pull it.  But all was quiet at the scene of the disaster.  Not even a fragment of wreckage was left upon the surface to show where the Golden Rod had found her last harbour.  For a long quarter of an hour they pulled round and round in the moonlight, but not a glimpse could they see of the Puritan seaman, and at last, when in spite of the balers the water was washing round their ankles, they put her head about once more, and made their way in silence and with heavy hearts to their dreary island of refuge.