“It’s our only chance. Without people on land to help afterwards, it would be of no use; and it’s an even chance whether it succeeds now. All that I have in my favor is the current, and that may prove treacherous. You are both lashed fast, and can’t be well washed overboard. But, in any event, this suspense won’t last much longer; for the ship must soon go to pieces. God grant that I may not be too late, even if I reach the shore.”
“She’s a brave girl, whoever she is,” the Major answered to Mullen. “Most of her sex, at such times, I’m told, lose all presence of mind, and I don’t wonder at it. But she seems as courageous as Joan of Arc.”
“Jane Arc,” said Mullen, innocently. “I don’t know her. Some soldier girl in the army, Major, like Captain Molly, at Monmouth battle?”
Major Gordon did not reply; in fact he did not hear the remark, for his faculties were absorbed in watching the crisis of Captain Powell’s fate. Now the swimmer would be hurried on, a hundred feet or more, by a single wave. Now he would be caught by a counter current and drifted obliquely out to sea again. Here a roller would submerge him. There he would succeed in riding an enormous wave, which the spectators had feared would carry him under. For awhile he appeared neither to gain nor to lose. At last, a fortunate billow, exactly such another as had frustrated Newell going in an opposite direction, caught the swimmer, and hurried him towards the beach, like a stone sent from a sling.
Instantaneously everybody rushed to the edge of the breaker.
“Join hands! form a line!” cried Mullen; “we must catch him as he comes in, or the undertow may carry him off again. And even if it don’t,” he added, “the breakers will pummel the life out of him directly.” Mullen himself took the advanced post, thrusting Major Gordon behind, saying, “I’m more used to it!” and the rest placed themselves as accident permitted. A few moments of eager expectation followed. Then the form of the now senseless mariner was seen rushing towards them, on the crest of a breaker; the waters descended; the two leaders of the line seized the body; and then all went under together, most of them being struck flat on the strand.
It was only for a second, however. Still holding fast to each other, they struggled to their feet, and when the wave receded, stood there triumphantly, Mullen and the Major having the Captain in their arms, and the rest of the party already seizing the line which communicated with the ship.
Captain Powell, though temporarily stunned, revived almost as soon as they bore him out of the water. But his accents were broken and faint. He trembled also like a child. He had wound up his entire energies to his late terrible struggle, and the revulsion left him, nervously as well as muscularly, as helpless as an infant.
“Haul on the line!” he said, feebly. “I made it fast to a stout cable. Thank God! Thank God!”
Never did men pull on a rope more lustily than his hearers. Mullen himself timed them, with a “Yo, heave o’, merrily, lads, merrily,” so that in a little while, the cable had reached half way to the shore. All at once, however, it refused to advance. In vain they pulled; not an inch would it give; and at last Mullen ordered them to desist lest they should break the rope.