“Jump aboard!” he cried. “There’s people on a raft, coming right in before the wind and sea, and they will go right into the breakers on the Brant rocks, except we can get them off. I happened to be looking with the glass, and saw them.”
“We’ll do what men can do,” said Uncle Isaac. “Hadn’t we better call at the island, and get Ben? It’s right on our road.”
“That’s a good thought. Wonder I didn’t think of it.”
Ben had not noticed the raft, but he saw the schooner coming, and knew that it must be a matter of life and death that would bring men to the island in such a gale. Both he and Sally met them at the shore.
“I want you, my little boy,” cried Captain Rhines, as the schooner luffed up beside the wharf, in the still water of Elm Island harbor. “There’s a raft coming before the wind and sea, with people on it, and a signal of distress flying. It’s breaking thirty feet high on the Brant rocks, and they will soon be in that surf, unless we take them off.”
No more was said. Ben jumped aboard, and the schooner, close hauled, stood boldly out into that tremendous sea. The men all commenced to lash themselves. Charlie was forward. He had made the end of a rope fast to the foremast, and put it around his waist; but, before he could secure the other end, she shipped a sea over the bows, that filled her all full, and bore Charlie before it like a feather. In another instant it would have taken him overboard, when nothing could have saved him; but Joe caught him as he was going over the rail.
“A miss is as good as a mile,” said Captain Rhines. “She shakes off the water like a Newfoundland dog. Ben, take the axe, and knock off the waist boards, and then the sea can have a fair chance to get out as fast as it comes in.”
They were now nearing the raft, as it came rapidly down before the sea, while the crew of the schooner were endeavoring to cut athwart its path. Catching glimpses of it in moments when the raft and the schooner both chanced to be on the top of a sea at the same instant, they perceived that it was constructed of the yards and smaller spars of a vessel, with an elevation amid-ships, where an upright spar was secured by shrouds, on which an English flag was flying. On this elevation were dark objects, that Captain Rhines (at home) had made out, with his glass, to be human beings.
“If they are people, father,” said Ben, who, confident to hold himself against the sea, had gone into the bows, “they are dead; for there’s nothing moves, only as the sea moves it.”
“Perhaps not, Ben. They are lashed, chilled, and most dead, but I’ve seen men brought to that apparently had but a few more breaths to draw.”