Ruth gave a queer little cry. “Donald?” For a moment she stood as if dazed. She had been thinking of him all along and wondering where he was. And he was out in that! And he had not come to her! Everything seemed to swim before her, and she would have fallen had not Captain Westhaver grabbed her as she swayed. “Oh! oh!” she whimpered. “He’s gone and I didn’t know it! Oh! oh! he’s gone.... Oh, God help him!” And with Helena and Westhaver holding her up, she stared into the blackness alternately sobbing and calling on the Almighty to guard and keep the man who was struggling through the breakers in an effort to save them all.
And McKenzie was having a desperate struggle—the greatest fight of his life! With his head down, and swimming a powerful overhand stroke, he got clear of the ship and into a broiling welter of leaping combers which toppled over on his body, forcing him under with the weight of the falling water and tossing him on their frothing crests like a shingle in an eddy. The tide, racing in with the sea and wind, was driving him towards the rocks, and he realized that, once in its grip, he would be done for—smashed to a pulp on the ledges which were dashing the seas to spray and effervescing foam.
It was about a hundred yards to the sand beach, but it was a hundred yards of raging water—a mill-race of shouting, roaring, fighting, whirling combers whipped to fury by wind, back-wash, tide and the inequalities of the bottom, and by the time he had three minutes in among this inferno of water he felt his strength giving out. He was choking for want of air; his mouth and nose were full of salt brine, and the buffeting of the waves and the drag of the tide were fast weakening him, and he hadn’t made half the distance. Gasping for breath, he struggled on until he felt that he had reached the limit of his endurance. His muscles were lagging and refusing to respond. His heart was pounding as if it would burst inside his chest, and he found it increasingly hard to breathe. He thought of his mother and Ruth and murmured a prayer as his strokes became feebler. He was going to die—a modern Leander of Abydos—and he decided to throw up his hands and drown rather than be shattered on the rocks with the spark of life in his body. He had stopped swimming, when a kindly under-tow—an inshore eddy—caught him and bore him away from the ledges.
He thought dazedly of the women aboard the wreck and it spurred him to life again. Treading water in the momentary respite and gulping great chestfuls of air, he prepared himself for the final effort—the battle with the surf on the beach. He could discern the shore clearly now as he rose on a wave, and when he made out the sloping sand of the beach he took a last gulp of air and drove in on the back of a mighty comber. Husbanding his strength, he held back when it broke until he felt the sand under his feet. Digging his toes in, he tried to stem the back-wash, but he was too weak. His legs collapsed under him and he was caught in the following comber and rolled over and over in a broil of water and sand. Clawing desperately at the unresisting grains, he caught a projecting bolt from a buried wharf-timber, and hanging on to it with all the strength he could muster until the wave receded, he scrambled frantically on hands and knees up the beach ere the next breaker came pounding in.
For a full five minutes he lay prone with half the senses and breath knocked out of him, until the brain, recovering quicker than the muscles, began to urge, “Get up! Think of the women! Judson, Helena, Ruth!” Even her name came to him sub-consciously just as it had come when he was for giving up in the broil of it. He rolled painfully to his feet and staggered like a drunken man along the beach. He glanced at the loom of the steamer lying amidst the whitewater on the ledges, then suddenly felt for the line. It was still around his body, and he gave three strong jerks at it to see if it had parted. By the feel of it, he knew it was all right and mumbled thanks to God. Then, stumbling over the sand, boulders, and pieces of timber and trees, he ran for the point.
Aboard the wreck, Nickerson was almost frantic with fear. The line had not taken a fathom from him for about five minutes and he imagined the worst. Then three distinct tugs came on the cord which he held. He wheeled around with a triumphant bellow. “By the old red-headed Judas Priest! He’s done it! By Godfrey! He’s done it ... th’ bully boy!” And he laughed like a drunken man.
Helena gave Ruth a violent shake and almost screamed, “Do you hear, Ruth? He’s done it! He’s ashore! Oh, God, we’re saved! We’re saved! Oh, Father, to thee our thanks ... for him ... and us!” Ruth nodded dumbly. She couldn’t speak, but mentally she was praying and thanking the Almighty for His mercy.
Judson was bawling—calmly now. “He’s getting araound to the Point. Git that block an’ tayckle ready, Cap’en. You got that strop araound th’ forem’st and a tail-block on? Good! And that ring-buoy and whip-line—have ye got it slung and ready to reeve off? Fine! We’ll send that halliard rope ashore....” He and Westhaver walked forward with the line, shouting encouragement to the drenched, shivering, and now apathetic mob of people hanging in life-lines under the lee of the deck-house. The rising tide was sending solid water over the packet’s upper decks now and pieces of the superstructure were sluicing over the lee rail. The people in the shelter of the house were often up to their knees in swirling water. McKenzie had just reached the shore in time! “Don’t git scared naow,” consoled Westhaver. “We’ll hev ye ashore in a jiffy. Th’ rope’s gone in ... cheer up ... soon be aout o’ this!” And Judson was chattering away to him and the packet’s crew as they rigged the breeches gear. “Knew him since he made his first voyage to sea ... a poor little whitefaced nipper of a ’prentice-boy in a lousy four-mast barque out o’ Glasgow. Game as they make ’em.... I made a sailor out o’ him ... th’ little skinny nipper ... and naow he’s a better man than me!”
“Aye!” said Eben solemnly, “and you’re an able man yourself, Judson Nickerson! An able man!”
Up on the Point, Donald, shivering in his wet underwear, hauled the stout rope ashore and was lashing a block to a tree trunk when several men with lanterns appeared. They stared at him in astonishment, and in answer to their questions he pointed to seaward and replied huskily, “There she is! Steerin’ gear wheel rope parted and she grounded on the ledge yonder. I’m rigging a breeches-buoy to bring the folks ashore.... Here! Fix this. My hands are numb! Look sharp or the old hooker will be falling to pieces in the pounding she’s getting out there now!” The men—Eastville folks who had come out to the Point to see what had delayed the steamer—set to work and rigged the gear under McKenzie’s direction. Within ten minutes they were hauling the first passengers ashore.