The doctor looked at the speaker searchingly for a few moments, and then said, quietly:
“Can we do anything to try and save his life, my man? Life-preservers, raft, or anything of that sort?”
The old sailor laughed softly.
“Life-preserver in a sea like this means being smothered in a few minutes, and such a raft as we could make would be knocked to pieces and us washed off. No, sir; we’re in shelter where we can die peaceably, and all we can do is to meet it like men.”
The doctor’s brow knit, and he looked as if in horrible pain for a few moments. Then a calm, peaceful look came over his countenance, and he smiled and held out his hand.
“Yes,” he said, quietly; “meet it like men.”
The old sailor stared at him for a moment, and then snatched and gripped the extended hand in perfect silence.
“Ha!” he ejaculated at last. “I feel better, sir, after that. Now let’s talk about the youngster there.”
The huge breakers had kept on steadily thundering at the side of the steamer, rising over her and crashing down on her decks with the greatest regularity; but now, as the old sailor spoke and turned towards the insensible boy, it seemed as if a billow greater than any which had come before rolled up and broke short on the reef, with the result that the immense bank of water seemed to plunge under the broad side of the steamer, lifting her, and once more they were borne on the summit of the wave with a rush onward. There was a fierce, wild, hissing roar, and the great vessel seemed to creak and groan as if it were a living creature in its final agony, and old Bostock gripped the doctor’s hand again.
“It’s come, my lad,” he shouted, “and we’ll meet it like men. We shall strike again directly, and she’ll go to pieces like a bundle of wood.”