"Here, Young Zeb, look through my glass," sang out Farmer Tresidder, handing the telescope. He had been up at the vicarage drinking hot grog with the parson and the rescued men, when Sim Udy ran up with news of the fresh disaster; and his first business on descending to the Cove had been to pack Ruby and Mary Jane off to bed with a sound rating. Parson Babbage had descended also, carrying a heavy cane (the very same with which he broke the head of a Radical agitator in the bar of the "Jolly Pilchards," to the mild scandal of the diocese), and had routed the rest of the women and chastised the drunken. The parson was a remarkable man, and looked it, just now, in spite of the red handkerchief that bound his hat down over his ears.
"Nothing alive there—eh?"
Young Zeb, with a glass at his left eye, answered—
"Nothin' left but a frame o' ribs, sir, an' the foremast hangin' over, so far as I can see; but 'tis all a raffle o' spars and riggin' close under her side. I'll tell 'ee better when this wave goes by."
But the next instant he took down the glass, with a whitened face, and handed it to the parson.
The parson looked too. "Terrible!—terrible!" he said, very slowly, and passed it on to Farmer Tresidder.
"What is it? Where be I to look? Aw, pore chaps—pore chaps!
Man alive—but there's one movin'!"
Zeb snatched the glass.
"'Pon the riggin', Zeb, just under her lee! I saw en move— a black-headed chap, in a red shirt—"
"Right, Farmer—he's clingin', too, not lashed." Zeb gave a long look. "Darned if I won't!" he said. "Cast over them corks, Sim Udy! How much rope have 'ee got, Jim?" He began to strip as he spoke.