Ever since Captain Powell had been brought so successfully to land, the spirits of the party had risen to the highest pitch, for they regarded the deliverance of the ladies as now certain. But at this check their feelings underwent a change. Whatever it was that stopped the cable, all hope of succoring those on the wreck must be abandoned, unless a way could be found to remove the impediment.
“The line won’t hold out long, either,” said Mullen; “for the force of the waves, with the dead weight of the cable attached to it, will snap it in two.”
“It must have caught on the ship,” added Major Gordon. Then suddenly, he continued in excited tones, “That brave girl sees it. She leaves her companion. She is coming forward, clinging to the starboard bulwarks. Heavens! the wave will reach her. No, it dashes to her feet, and then recedes, as if awed by her high courage. She has gained the bow. She stoops to examine the cable. She waves her hand to us. Pull away. It yields. It comes. Merrily in with it, lads.”
The excitement of this scene had not been confined to Major Gordon. The spectators followed every movement of Kate, with an absorption of feeling it would be impossible to describe; and when finally the cable began to move again, they burst simultaneously into a huzza. Even the two swimmers, exhausted as they were, and still unable to stand, had raised themselves on their elbows to watch the progress of Kate, and now joined feebly in the shouts at her success.
The cable was hauled in without further obstruction. Once secured, and made taut, the men proceeded, under the directions of Major Gordon, to rig the traveling hammock. Two of the mainsail hoops were first taken from the mast of the boat, however, and passed over the cable. The hammock was then soon rigged. A long line was attached to one end of this hammock, in order to be used for the ship, while a similar one was fastened to the other end.
Two of the most agile of the party were now selected to go off to the vessel. This they effected by traversing the cable, which they did with an agility that only sailors possess. It would have made any other description of person giddy to have crossed that awful abyss on a support so slender and vibratory.
We will not detain the reader by a tiresome recital of the rest of that eventful history. For, after the impromptu apparatus had been once securely rigged, the deliverance of Kate and her aunt was merely an affair of time.
Kate insisted on being left till the last. There was some difficulty in getting her still terrified aunt to the bow of the ship, and more in placing her safely in the hammock; but as her assistants had the precaution to lash her tightly in, so that she should not, in a moment of frenzied panic, leap from her frail couch, she reached the land without further hindrance. Kate followed. With unmoved nerve she stepped into the frail car, disposed herself so as to preserve its equilibrium, and holding firmly to it, was borne ashore with a rapidity that seemed almost like flying.
The two watermen now lost no time in abandoning the vessel. It was wise that they made such haste, for, in less than half an hour, and before the party had been able to prepare their boat for making sail again, the stout old craft, succumbing at last to the angry surges, parted in the middle, and rapidly broke into fragments.