“She is just about on the shallowest point of the reef,” Ben Harper said. “Now, how are you going to manage this job, Tom?”
“There is only one way to do it,” the skipper said. “There is water enough for us. Tide has flowed an hour and a half, and there must be two fathoms where she is lying. We must run up under her lee close enough to chuck a rope on board. Get a light rope bent on to the hawser. They must pull that on board, and we will hang to it as near as we dare.”
“You must go near her stern, Tom, or we shall get stove in with the masts and spars.”
“Yes, it is lucky the mizzen is standing, else we could not have gone alongside till they got rid of them all, and they would never do that afore she broke up.”
Horace, as he watched the ship, expected to see her go to pieces every moment. Each wave struck her with tremendous force, sending cataracts of water over her weather gunwale and across her deck. Many of the seas broke before they reached her, and the line of the reef could be traced far beyond her by the white and broken water.
“Now, then,” the skipper shouted, “I shall keep the Surf about twice her own length from the wreck, and then put the helm hard down and shoot right up to her.”
“That will be the safest plan, Tom. There are two men with ropes standing ready in the mizzen-shrouds.”
“I shall bring her in a little beyond that, Ben, if the wreck of the mainmast isn’t in the way; the mizzen may come out of her any moment, and if it fell on our decks it would be good-bye to us all.”
A cheer broke from the men huddled up under shelter of the weather bulwark as the little craft swept past her stern.
“Mind the wreck!” a voice shouted.