Every grind of the boom-jaws against the man’s leg wrung Donald’s sensitive heart. He saw that all efforts to budge the heavy boom by levering it away were of no avail. “Get me an ax!” he yelled, panting and perspiring and with the blood running cold within him at the terror of it all. When the axe was handed to him, Joak whimpered, “Ye’re no goin’ tae cut his leg aff, are ye, Donal’?”
“Leg? Hell!” snapped the skipper. “Stand clear! I’m going to chop through the boom!” And he swung the keen blade into the wood until he had severed the jaws and Wesley was released.
“God’s truth, that was awful!” he panted. “Get him down in the cabin and place him in a lee bunk. His leg must be crushed to a pulp.” Staggering along the deck with the groaning man and deluged with spray and solid water, they reached the gangway and managed to get Sanders into the cabin. They placed him tenderly in a bunk in the darkness and scrambled on deck again for still more strenuous work.
The Alameda was lying on her beam-ends in the trough of the sea and the waves were making a complete breach over her. “Slack away the fore-sheet!” shouted McKenzie calmly. “And if that don’t lift her, we’ll try and haul the sail off her!” A half an hour’s desperate work on the part of the five men failed to bring the schooner up, and Donald realized there was only one other thing to do. “Get me your axe again, Joak,” he shouted, and when it was brought to him he slid down into the water to leeward and hacked the lanyards of the main-shrouds. Crawling up to windward, he bawled to Surrette, “Cast off your main-sheet and crotch-tackles! I’m going to cut away the main-mast!” And when this was done, he waited a moment when the vessel rolled to leeward and swung his axe into the taut weather lanyards. With a twang of the spring-stay as it parted, the big spar went by the board and into the sea.
Relieved of the main-mast and with the foresail down, the schooner slowly came up from her beam-end position, but wallowed in the trough with her decks listed to port. The foremast, with nothing to stay it aft, was reeling precariously in the step and threatened to topple over the side until McKenzie and Surrette clawed their way aloft and stayed it with two lengths of three-inch halliard which they carried to the gypsy-winch and hove taut.
When this work was done, they double reefed the foresail and set it, and Donald sent Ainslie Williams to the wheel. “We’ll jibe her over on the other tack and get to work on that salt which has shifted up inside her port top-sides. It’ll shift back some when we put her over.... Lash yourself to the box, then let her run off for a spell and watch for a lull and a smooth before you put the helm up on her!” And he and the three others stood by a jibing tackle which they rigged to ease the fore-boom over.
Under sail again, the schooner ran before the wind and sea, and then Ainslie shouted and put the wheel over. Bang! The foreboom whipped from port to starboard with a jarring shock which caused the stout halliard backstays to stretch and McKenzie to glance anxiously at the mast.
“She’s alright,” he ejaculated grimly, and he was about to make a leap for the fore-rigging as the schooner came up, when another big sea piled over the stern and, catching him in its terrific onrush, drove him with sickening force into the fore pin-rail. For almost half a minute he was under water, and when he emerged dazed, sputtering and gasping, it was to find Surrette washing about in the water, which seemed to fill her decks from stem to stern.
Hauling the old fisherman to his feet, McKenzie found him unconscious from a blow on the head, but, sensing from the slatting of the foresail, that the wheel was deserted, he propped the man against a splintered dory and ran aft to find nobody at the spokes. Before he could swing the wheel down, the foresail jibed, and the sail split from head to foot and was soon a rectangle of slatting rags.
Joak and Jim from out of the darkness appeared aft. “Where’s Ainslie?” bawled Donald. “God Almighty, but this is one hell of a night! Go for’ad, you fellows, and get Surrette into the cabin. He’s lying stunned against a dory!” And he slipped the wheel into the becket lashed hard down, and searched the lee quarter for the missing Ainslie with a chill dread gripping his heart. When the other two brought Surrette aft, Donald met them. “Ainslie’s gone!” he said huskily. “God be good to him!”