How they worked, those amazing, those indomitable steamboat-men! It was as if the spirits of all the “Plinlimmon’s” old sailors had come back to join in the struggle. They fought with strange monsters in the shape of sails and ropes, they groped in tangles and labyrinths of unaccustomed rigging; and their great hearts kept them going. While there was breath in their bodies to work they pumped, and when they could do no more they dropped in their tracks and slept the sleep of sheer exhaustion.
Once the whole crew was washed overboard clinging to the lee forebrace, only to be sucked back again with the next roll of the ship. Once Kavanagh heard a man pouring out a flood of the vilest oaths in a tone of mild expostulation, as he nursed a hand streaming with blood which had been jammed between a block and the pin-rail. And once he remembered seeing that lower topsail, bent with such pains and peril, simply fade out of the bolt-ropes and be seen no more. It didn’t split or tear. It just vanished....
But there always seemed to him to be a sort of dream-like atmosphere about the whole thing. He was never quite sure what did happen and what didn’t happen. It was impossible on the face of it, for instance, that Old Paul should have been there hauling with the rest—yet at the time Kavanagh was quite sure that he saw him. It was also impossible that there should have been a dozen men on the yard when there were only half a dozen in the whole blessed ship—yet Kavanagh was equally sure at the time that he saw and counted them. He even remembered some of their faces—a huge fellow with a bare, tattooed chest, in particular, that he hadn’t seen about the ship before.... Not that he ever mentioned it to anyone else. He might have been asleep and dreamed it, for all he knew. Still, it served a useful purpose at the time. It put heart into him. And he needed it before the end!...
At last—at long last—came a grey dawn that broke through ragged clouds upon a sea heaving as with spent passion, upon a handful of weary, indomitable men, upon an old ship that still lived!
Kavanagh was suddenly aware that he was tired—dog-tired; that his wrists were red-raw with the chafing of his oilskins; that the weight of uncounted days and nights without sleep was weighing down his eyelids like lead.
But he had won—he had won! And he had commanded the “Plinlimmon”! Whatever the years to come might bring or take away, they could never rob him of that glory. They could bring him no greater prize.
There was a yell from the look-out, and a faint answering shout came back out of the grey dawn.
“The ba-arque, aho-oy!”
A boat scraped against the ship’s side. One by one, a succession of familiar faces topped the “Plinlimmon’s” rail. The “Gairloch’s” donkeyman, the “Gairloch’s” cook, the “Gairloch’s” boy clutching and being desperately clutched by the “Gairloch’s” cat!
Last of all, Ferguson climbed heavily over the rail and sat down on a spare spar, wiping his face with a lump of waste.