As the three remaining boys laid to the oars, Jerry and Mac freed the life line that had been made fast for Bob’s and Jerry’s security.
“Must be abandoned,” spluttered Mac, as he followed the line aft. Then, at the stern, he panted, “Get her under bow chains, Captain Joe, an’ I’ll git a hitch on ’em. Must be a pack o’ dead ones—not ready with no line—after we showed ’em our light.”
At the instant, the distress signal blazed up anew like a rocket. As the unexpected light lit up the scene, the boys dropped their stroke. Even Captain Joe paused to make a quick survey. What they had taken to be a schooner was a small steamer, wallowing in the trough of the sea. There were neither side, port nor spar lights. But, just forward of the aft deck cabins, a bedraggled man, on his knees, was dipping oil or pitch into a blazing barrel.
“Fall to!” shouted Captain Joe sharply again. As the three oarsmen swung their long sweeps once more in the quieter waters in the steamer’s lee, the Escambia crawled under the foundering steamer’s cut water. There was a crash. Believing that the vessel in distress was a sailing craft, Captain Joe and Mac had planned to make fast to her bowsprit stays. Too late to alter the Escambia’s course, the life boat plunged alongside the rolling steamer’s smooth bow.
But the gritty Mac was not to be thwarted. As the lifeboat rose on the roll of water the “expelled” member of the boat club hurled himself forward in the darkness. There was another smash against the steamer’s side but Bob’s bullying enemy held fast and, one arm about a still standing deck rail stanchion, as the life boat fell off once more in the rush of the storm, there was a thick shout of, “All right here,” and those in the boat knew that Mac had found lodgment on the steamer.
Once again the almost exhausted boys bent to their oars and Captain Joe swung the Escambia back in the lee of the steamer. Jerry was braced in the bow, and at the first call from Mac he cast the line. It fell short, and again he tried. This time there was a pause and then another panting cry, “All fast here—haul away.”
“Gimme a hand, youse kids,” was Jerry’s peremptory orders. Three spent oarsmen tumbled forward into the bow.
“Haul away and pass up the light,” sang out Mac again. Four pairs of strong young arms drew the Escambia slowly toward the steamer and, as the life boat bumped against the steamer’s hull once more, Captain Joe, pushing the straining boys aside, grasped the line, and with a turn made the rope fast about the bow post. [Jerry already had the light high above his head]. Mac, with a turn of the rope about the top of a fender was holding on desperately.
