“We will all come back,” Lessingham promised.
They fought their way down to the beach. At first the storm completely deafened all sound. The lanterns, waved here and there by unseen hands, seemed part of some ghostly tableau, of which the only background was the raging of the storm. Then suddenly, with a startling hiss, another rocket clove its way through the darkness. They had an instantaneous but brilliant view of all that was happening,—saw the trawler lying on its side, apparently only a few yards from the shore, saw the line stretched to the beach, on which, even at that moment, a man was being drawn ashore, licked by the spray, his strained face and wind-tossed hair clearly visible. Then all was darkness again more complete than ever. They struggled down on to the shingle, where the little cluster of fishermen were hard at work with the line. Almost the first person they ran across was Jimmy Dumble. He was standing on the edge of the breakwater with a great lantern in his hand, superintending the line, and, as they drew near, Lessingham, who was a little in advance, could hear his voice above the storm. He was shouting towards the wreck, his hand to his mouth.
“Send the master over next, you lubbers, or we'll cut the line. Do you hear?”
There was no reply or, if there was, it was drowned in the wind. Lessingham gripped the fisherman by the arm.
“Whom do you mean by 'master'?” he demanded. Dumble scarcely glanced at his interlocutor.
“Why, Sir Henry Cranston, to be sure,” was the agitated answer. “These lubbers of sea hands are all coming off first, and the line won't stand for more than another one or two,” he added, dropping his voice.
Then the thrill of those few minutes' excitement unrolled itself into a great drama before Lessingham's eyes. Sir Henry was on that ship as near as any man might wish to be to death.
“'Ere's the next,” Jimmy muttered, as they turned the windlass vigorously. “Gosh, 'e's a heavy one, too!”
Then came a cry which sounded like a moan and above it the shrill fearful yell of a man who feels himself dropping out of the world's hearing. Lessingham raised the lantern which stood on the beach by Jimmy's side. The line had broken. The body of its suspended traveller had disappeared! And just then, strangely enough, for the first time for over an hour, the heavens opened in one great sheet of lightning, and they could see the figure of one man left on the ship, clinging desperately to the rigging.
“Tie the line around me,” Jimmy shouted. “Let her go. Get the other end on the windlass.”