Murray staggered to his feet and set his lips to my ear.
"Must—cut—free—mizzen—breach—hull——"
So much I understood, and assisted him to slash the rope which bound us to the deck. Peter saw what we were up to and loosed himself, taking care in his deliberate fashion to strengthen Moira's lashings. Then the three of us fought our way down into the hell-reek of the waist, where small boats and water-butts and dead men swirled fore and aft in a torrent of pounding seas.
There were axes in the box from which I had procured the rope, and we equipped ourselves with them, waded thigh deep through the tangle of water and wreckage and attacked the maze of stays and rigging that united the dangling mizzenmast to the ship. Not a man helped us. There was not a living man in sight aft of the mainmast, and it was as much as a man's life was worth to try to work aft of that point, for on the one side there was a wide breach in the bulwarks through which the waves poured, and opposite was the gap the mizzenmast had crushed. Whoever crossed the deck there must have been carried overboard, one way or the other.
Where we were we had some slight shelter from the poop, but 'twas sufficiently hazardous in all conscience. I can see my great-uncle still, in his black silk coat and breeches, all adrip with the salt water as he labored with the energy of a man of half his age, always swift to perceive the strategic center of the tangle, always first to wade into the tricky web of cordage where a misstep meant a plunge overside.
Twice Peter rescued him from certain death, and once the Dutchman saved me when a mountainous sea curled down upon us over the James' bulwarks and was like to have carried me off in its passing. And it was Peter whose brute strength and cool-headedness made the most of my great-uncle's agility of wit, and hewed and hacked the mizzenmast from its moorings. Aye, and none too soon; for when we clambered back on the poop Moira met us with hands clasped in terror and pointed to leeward where a rocky headland loomed through the gray rain.
Murray gave it one look and leaped for the wheel. The Easterling was bent over in the odd, huddled posture he had assumed from the moment the storm hit us, and he lolled sidewise as my great-uncle grasped his shoulder, his body all askew from the small of his back upward. He made no response, and slipped lower in the coils of rope that bound him to his post; his gnarled fingers slid off the spokes; his feet went out from under him.
"His back is broken," shouted my great-uncle.
The James had begun to gather headway; but as the wheel was released from the dead helmsman's grip her head fell off, and she dropped sluggishly into the trough of the seas which surged over the shattered waist, and one green hill of water burst squarely on the poop, hurling us to the deck. Peter recovered his footing before either Murray or I, shoved the Easterling's body aside and gripped the wheel in his own hands. Slowly, the buoyancy all out of her, the Royal James swung around in response to the rudder's thrust and lumbered off before the wind.
The headland Moira had sighted faded into the mist; but my great-uncle shook his head sadly.