“Down between the rocks, heads under, every man o’ ye!” shouted the captain.
The captain sprang last, crouching up to his neck in the sea, his head below the jagged points of two rough stones, just as the huge fourth derrick, under which he had stood, lunged wildly, and with a ringing blow struck a stone within three feet of his head,—the great anchor-chain guy twisting like a cobra over the slimy rocks.
When all was still, Sanford’s anxious face rose cautiously from behind a protecting rock near where the first derrick had struck. There came a cheer of safety from Caleb and Bowles, answered by another from Captain Joe, and Sanford and the men crawled out of their holes, and clambered upon the rocks, the water dripping from their clothing.
Not a man had been hurt!
“What did I tell you?” called out Carleton sneeringly, more to hide his alarm than anything else.
“That’s too bad, Mr. Sanford, but we can’t help it,” said Captain Joe in his customary voice, paying no more attention to Carleton’s talk than if it had been the slop of the waves at his feet. “All hands, now, on these derricks. We got’er git ’em up, boys, if it takes all night.”
Again the men sprang to his orders, and again and again the crescendos of oaths culminated in fortissimos of profanity as the risks for the men increased.
For five consecutive hours they worked without a pause.
Slowly and surely the whole system, beginning with the two side derricks, whose guys still held their anchorage, was raised upright, Sanford still watching the opposite derrick, a new outward guy having replaced the broken one.
It was six o’clock when the four derricks were again fairly erect. The same gang was tugging at the watch-tackle, and the distance between the hook and the ring was once more reduced to five feet. The hook gained inch by inch towards its anchorage. Captain Joe’s eyes gleamed with suppressed satisfaction.