“Back with the cradle!” he shouted, “haul away. The ship won’t hold together long.”
The cradle began to run back over the swinging rope, while the man who had returned said in reply to questions:
“Those were all. The rest of the poor souls had been beaten off, and these couldn’t have lasted many minutes longer. You must look alive.”
The men waited anxiously for the signal, and then another mate was hauled over the waves, and the cradle sent back, while Dick stood trembling and wanting to ask why Will, who was a boy, had not been sent first.
Then came another, and still it was not Will.
“This time it must be he,” thought Dick; but when the cradle arrived once more, it was the face of Josh that saluted them.
“Haul back quick,” the latter said. “She was shivering under my feet when I come away.”
“And you left that boy to drown!” roared Uncle Abram, catching Josh by the throat.
Josh did not resent it, but said quietly, in a lull of the storm:
“He wouldn’t come first. It was like drowning both him and me to stand gashly arguing at a time like that.”