Zeb also could only be descried at intervals, his head appearing, now and again, like a cork on the top of a billow.  But the last of the ebb was helping him, and Jim Lewarne, himself at times neck-high in the surf, continued to pay out the line slowly.  In fact, the feat was less dangerous than it seemed to the spectators.  A few hours before, it was impossible; but by this there was little more than a heavy swell after the first twenty yards of surf.  Zeb’s chief difficulty would be to catch a grip or footing on the reef where the sea again grew broken, and his foremost dread lest cramp should seize him in the bitterly cold water.  Rising on the swell, he could spy the seaman tossing and sinking on the mast just ahead.

As it happened, he was spared the main peril of the reef, for in fifty more strokes he found himself plunging down into a smooth trough of water with the mast directly beneath.  As he shot down, the mast rose to him, he flung his arms out over it, and was swept up, clutching it, to the summit of the next swell.

Oddly enough, his first thought, as he hung there, was not for the man he had come to save, but for that which had turned him pale when first he glanced through the telescope.  The foremast across which he lay was complete almost to the royal-mast, though the yards were gone; and to his left, just above the battered fore-top, five men were lashed, dead and drowned.  Most of them had their eyes wide open, and seemed to stare at Zeb and wriggle about in the stir of the sea as if they lived.  Spent and wretched as he was, it lifted his hair.  He almost called out to them at first, and then he dragged his gaze off them, and turned it to the right.  The survivor still clung here, and Zeb—­who had been vaguely wondering how on earth he contrived to keep his seat and yet hold on by the rope without being torn limb from limb—­now discovered this end of the mast to be so tightly jammed and tangled against the wreck as practically to be immovable.  The man’s face was about as scaring as the corpses’; for, catching sight of Zeb, he betrayed no surprise, but only looked back wistfully over his left shoulder, while his blue lips worked without sound.  At least, Zeb heard none.

He waited while they plunged again and emerged, and then, drawing breath, began to pull himself along towards the stranger.  They had seen his success from the beach, and Jim Lewarne, with plenty of line yet to spare, waited for the next move.  Zeb worked along till he could touch the man’s thigh.

“Keep your knee stiddy,” he called out; “I’m goin’ to grip hold o’t.”

For answer, the stranger only kicked out with his foot, as a pettish child might, and almost thrust him from his hold.

“Look’ee here:  no doubt you’m ’mazed, but that’s a curst foolish trick, all the same.  Be that tangle fast, you’m holding by?”

The man made no sign of comprehension.

“Best not trust to’t, I reckon,” muttered Zeb:  “must get past en an’ make fast round a rib.  Ah! would ’ee, ye varment?”