“Put your backs into it, my lads,” cried Joe Cross, almost fiercely. “Steady! Steady all, and look out that you don’t have a smash. Pull! Hard! Here, I shall be tugged out of the boat!”
For it seemed almost directly after that the dimly-seen hull of the brig rose up out of the darkness close at hand, while from where he knelt—fortunately for himself—the coxswain felt his arms being jerked out of their sockets as he caught with the boat-hook at the brig’s main chains. “Stand by there!” he roared, as he held on. “Lend a hand here to help the gentlemen on board! Somebody say it in French! Up with you!”
There was no need for the use of another tongue, for a lantern shed its light down upon them, willing hands were ready, and the Count and Morny scrambled aboard.
The next moment the Count was giving orders for a rope to be passed down to the boat.
“Make fast, and come on board!” he shouted. “You’ll never get back to-night.”
The order came too late, for as he spoke another order was given out by Joe Cross, who had loosed the precarious hold he had with the boat-hook, as he shouted while giving the boat a thrust away—
“Now for it, my lads! Pull for all you know!”
Almost the next moment Rodd dimly saw that they were clear, and as the men tugged at their oars with all their might he dropped upon his knees in front of stroke, clapped his hands against the oar, and swinging with the man, thrust with all his force.
Five minutes of desperate tugging at the oars in the midst of darkness which seemed to rapidly increase. The men had rowed with all their force—not to get back to the schooner, but to reach the brig and one of her ropes that they knew would be thrown to their help; but to Rodd, as he strained his eyes from where he knelt striving to give force to the stroke oar, it was like catching so many glimpses, first of the brig’s side, then of its stern, and then once more it was as if they were standing still in the water and the brig was rushing away.
“Steady, my lads! Don’t break your hearts!” cried Joe Cross firmly, his voice ringing clearer out of the black silence. “It aren’t to be done. Mid-stream’s our game. If we try to get ashore we shall be among the branches, capsized in a moment, and—”