“This finishes it!” Broughton thought.
He was swept clean off his feet; rolled over and over; buried in foam; engulfed in what seemed to him like the whole Atlantic ocean; carried, as he believed, right down to Davy Jones’s locker, where the light of day would never reach him again....
The next thing he knew he was lying jammed against the lee rail of the poop, his legs hanging outboard, his arm hooked round a cleat, presumably by some subconscious instinct of self-preservation, for he had no recollection of putting it there. The water was pouring past him in a green cataract, and dragging at him like clutching fingers. He was alive. The ship was alive. “Good old girl!” Broughton said to himself. He began to struggle to his feet. Something moved beside him and clawed at his ankles.
“Oh, Lord!” said a voice out of the darkness—the mate’s voice. “Oh, Lord—I thought I was a goner!”
“Oh—you!” said Broughton. “Get off my feet, damn you!”
“Oh, Lord!” said the voice again.
“Pull yourself together!” Broughton rapped out. “What were you doing? Why didn’t you call me?”
“There wasn’t time,” moaned the mate. “She was going along all right, and the next minute—oh, Lord, I was nearly overboard!”
“Think you’re at a bloody revival meeting?” snapped Broughton. He shook him off, and, holding by the rail, fought his way up the slanting deck to the wheel.
The young second mate came butting head down through the murk.