Unloosed from their lashing by the constant turning and twisting of the ship and the force of the wind, the boarding and landing tackle had been trailing beneath the keel, a tangled mass of cordage and leather.  Upon the occasions that the Vanator rolled completely over, these things would be wrapped around her until another revolution in the opposite direction, or the wind itself, carried them once again clear of the deck to trail, whipping in the storm, beneath the hurtling ship.

Into this fell the body of the warrior, and as a drowning man clutches at a straw so the fellow clutched at the tangled cordage that caught him and arrested his fall.  With the strength of desperation he clung to the cordage, seeking frantically to entangle his legs and body in it.  With each jerk of the ship his hand holds were all but torn loose, and though he knew that eventually they would be and that he must be dashed to the ground beneath, yet he fought with the madness that is born of hopelessness for the pitiful second which but prolonged his agony.

It was upon this sight then that Gahan of Gathol looked, over the edge of the careening deck of the Vanator, as he sought to learn the fate of his warrior.  Lashed to the gunwale close at hand a single landing leather that had not fouled the tangled mass beneath whipped free from the ship’s side, the hook snapping at its outer end.  The Jed of Gathol grasped the situation in a single glance.  Below him one of his people looked into the eyes of Death.  To the jed’s hand lay the means for succor.

There was no instant’s hesitation.  Casting off his deck lashings, he seized the landing leather and slipped over the ship’s side.  Swinging like a bob upon a mad pendulum he swung far out and back again, turning and twisting three thousand feet above the surface of Barsoom, and then, at last, the thing he had hoped for occurred.  He was carried within reach of the cordage where the warrior still clung, though with rapidly diminishing strength.  Catching one leg on a loop of the tangled strands Gahan pulled himself close enough to seize another quite near to the fellow.  Clinging precariously to this new hold the jed slowly drew in the landing leather, down which he had clambered until he could grasp the hook at its end.  This he fastened to a ring in the warrior’s harness, just before the man’s weakened fingers slipped from their hold upon the cordage.

Temporarily, at least, he had saved the life of his subject, and now he turned his attention toward insuring his own safety.  Inextricably entangled in the mess to which he was clinging were numerous other landing hooks such as he had attached to the warrior’s harness, and with one of these he sought to secure himself until the storm should abate sufficiently to permit him to climb to the deck, but even as he reached for one that swung near him the ship was caught in a renewed burst of the storm’s fury, the thrashing cordage whipped and snapped to the lunging of the great craft and one of the heavy metal hooks, lashing through the air, struck the Jed of Gathol fair between the eyes.