Out he went, not rapidly, out over the dark and frightful tangle of waters that flooded the smooth beach below him. He was facing shoreward. The moment his feet left the edge of the dune he was, to all intents and purposes, in the midst of an immense void, a bottomless region of water and blackness and cutting, stinging wind without landmark or landfall, terrible, thunderous, and empty of anything but sound. Beneath him the stout strength of the buoy bore him up. That, at least, was tangible. It was as if he rode slowly through chaos on an invisible steed, winged, at home in the air.
A little way and then a great wall of water coming unseen out of the darkness rose and curved and fell upon him. One instant he sensed its black, glittering height at his back, the next he was in the midst of it, as submerged as though he had been a thousand fathoms below the immense Atlantic; an instant later he was free of the barrier, drenched, drowning, water running off him in streams—riding slowly seaward, riding slowly on.
The line carrying the breeches buoy was as taut as it was possible to make it but inevitably it sagged in the middle, especially when the buoy was bearing a man’s weight. For a part of his journey Dick was under water almost continuously. He had to hold his breath and draw breath as cautiously as a swimmer in a heavy sea. The impact of waves bruised and shook him, the roar of the water deafened him. He could see neither ship nor shore. He grew doubtful, almost, of his own existence. Still he rode on.
As he neared the ship he was lifted above the angry flood that seethed about the vessel. Now he went forward more slowly, for he had to be hauled not only out but upward. Eventually he found himself hard upon the ship’s maintop, her torn rigging, singing deep bass notes in the wind, all about him. A little farther, a little farther, yet a little more and he was able to reach out his hand and clutch a ratline. A moment more and he was struggling to get his feet on the tiny platform of the top, Tom’s hand was under his shoulders, and Tom’s voice was in his ear.
“Fine work! Good boy! You’re just....” That much Tom’s voice managed to get to him above the awful noise.
XX
Mary did not see Richard Hand’s trip out in the buoy. She was busy ministering to the first man ashore, the sailor whom two of the Lone Cove crew had brought to the house. One of the men hurried back to help haul the buoy; the other stayed and, aided by John, stripped the sailor of his wet clothing and got him into night clothes and a bathrobe. He was unconscious.
Mary, arriving with a bottle of brandy, poured out a drink and they managed to get it down his throat as he revived.
He sat up and looked about him stupidly and pathetically. He was a big fellow with blond hair and blue eyes, a Scandinavian, apparently. After he had swallowed a little more brandy they put him in one of the beds in the living room which Mary had converted for hospital purposes. He did not appear to be frostbitten and, closing his eyes, he fell into a slumber that was not much lighter than the unconscious state in which he had reached the land.
Mary stood for a moment regarding the first—and it might be the only—life wrested from the clutch of the sea. He was handsome in a way and evidently not very old. A mere, overgrown boy, she thought to herself, but he might not be so young as he looked with his light hair and fair skin, almost beardless. He came of a seafaring race, whether Norwegian, Swedish, or Dane; he would not think very deeply of his adventure. She wondered for a moment what he thought about the sea, how he felt about it, how he would feel about it now; but she reflected that his escape would probably present itself to him as a piece of luck, nothing more, as something all in the day’s—or the year’s—work—nothing romantic about it.