“Doctor’s got him below, skipper.”  Poor Bob had tried to save himself with his right arm, and his hand had been bent backwards over, and doubled back on his forearm.  Bob was settled for the rest of the gale.  Lewis soon had the broken limb put up, and Bob stolidly smoked and pondered on the inequalities of life.  Why was he, and not another, told off to spring up that reeling mizen into a high breeze that ended by mastering him, and flinging him as if he had been a poor wrestler matched with a champion?  Here he was—­crippled.

“Well, Bob, if this is a specimen, we shall see something when it clears.”

“Yes, doctor; you may say that, you may.  I never see nothing like it.  If you give a man ten hundred thousand goulden sovereigns, and you says, ‘Tell me directly you see anything comin’,’ he couldn’t.  When I was on the look-out, I held this ’ere hand, as is broken, up before my eyes, and I couldn’t see it, sir—­and that’s the gospel, as I’m here!”

“Do you think we’re out of the track of ships?” “I know no more than Adam, sir.  Hello! what’s that?”

“Up here, sir—­up, quick!”

Ferrier’s heart jumped as he thought—­“Tom.”

“Haul on here, sir, with us.  God be praised, he took his rope over with him.  Haul, for the Lord’s sake!  Now! now!”

Ferrier lashed at his work in a fury of effort:  a sea sent him on his knees, and yet he lay hack against the inrush of water, and hauled with all the weight of body and arms.

“Haul, my men!  A good life is at the end of that line.  Haul! the ice may congeal his pulses before you get at him!  Haul! oh, haul!”

The skipper sprang to the grating abaft the wheel.

“Here he is.  Glory be to God!  Are you right, sir?”

No answer.

“My God! are you sure, skipper?”

“Sure.  Look!”

Ferrier saw an object like a mass of seaweed, but the night was so pitchy that no outline could be made out.

“Who durst try to pass a line under his arms?”

“Hand here, skipper; I will.”

“Oh, Lewis!  Keep nerve and eye steady.  The graves are twenty fathoms below.”

Lennard was inert, and no one could tell how he held on until he was flung on the deck.

“Lend us that binnacle lamp, Jim.  Turn it on him.”

Then it was seen that Tom might have been hauled up without putting Ferrier in peril, for the rope was twice coiled under his arms and loosely knotted in front; he had taken that precaution after seeing Bob fall.  Moreover, strange to say, his teeth were locked in the rope, for he had laid hold with the last effort of despair.

The wind volleyed; the darkness remained impenetrable, and every sea that came was a Niagara; yet the gallant smack stood to it, and Tom Lennard slumbered after the breath came back to him.  His ribs had stood the strain of that rope, but he had really been semi-strangled, and he was marked with two lurid, extravasated bands round his chest.  He never spoke before falling asleep; he only pressed Ferrier’s hand and pointed, with a smile, upward.