He was skipping and sobbing as if he were cracked. “Get a purchase!” he screeched. “We must have it out if we bust ourselves!”
I had sprung and seized on it even as he spoke. To lift it was far beyond our strength; but straining and hauling our mightiest, we found we could shift it a little, right and left, like a colossal dead tooth in its socket.
“O, if we only had Uncle Jenico’s wrench!” I panted, as we paused a moment in exhaustion. We were quite breathless and white. The sweat, for all the weather, was running down our faces.
“Harry!” I groaned piteously, “if we can’t get it out now, after all this—this——”
The look in his eyes stopped me. The despair was quite gone from them, and the old breezy fearlessness returned.
“But we’re going to get it out,” he cried, “and without Uncle Jenico’s wrench, too.”
His gay new confidence was revivifying, amazing. My heart, for all its terror, was beginning to expand in the radiance of it.
“How?” I gasped. “Don’t keep me waiting, you—you old beast!”
“I’ll show you,” he said; and with the word was down among the tackle, unknotting and pulling.
I watched him breathless—helped him where I could. Between us, in a few minutes, we had disentangled many fathoms of unbroken rope, and still there was more to come. We wrought hurriedly, feverishly, with one eye always on the rising water.