“We can’t hear a word,” shouted Captain Powell. “The ship won’t hold together much longer. Get a whale-boat, for the love of God, or we are lost.”
“Alas!” said Major Gordon, turning to Mullen, “there’s no such thing within ten miles—is there?” “No,” interrupted Mullen, shaking his head.
“But something must be done. I think a strong man might swim out to the wreck with a rope.” “Swim out with a rope!”
“Yes!”
“What good would that do?”
“If,” replied the Major, “we had a line out to the ship, it might be used to draw a cable from her ashore; and if there was a cable hauled taut, I’m sure I could rig a sort of sliding hammock, by which to land the ladies: for the hammock could be made to travel to and fro by lines attached to either end.”
Mullen regarded the speaker in mute admiration for a full minute before he spoke.
“I always said,” he replied, at last, “that it was everything to be a scollard. Now I might have puzzled over this matter for a week, yet never have thought of such a way as that. It would do, sartainly, if we only had the line out.”
“If I had a mortar here, and tools, I could fix it so as to throw a line over the wreck at once.”
“A musket wouldn’t do,” said Mullen, musingly; “even one with so big a bore as a ‘Queen Anne.’ I’ve a capital one in the boat.”