Chapter Twenty.
The End of the Adventure.
Our situation, now, was everything that could be desired for the execution of the delicate manoeuvre that I contemplated, and only a few minutes elapsed from the time of my stationing myself in the fore-rigging when the critical moment arrived for us to attempt it. I accordingly signed to Forbes to put the helm down; which he instantly did, lashing it fast; when he and I sprang simultaneously to the weather main-braces, to assist Sir Edgar and Joe in backing the main-topsail. This proved to be a tough drag for four men; but we managed to get the yards round far enough to lay the sail aback, when I once more darted forward into the fore-rigging to superintend the remainder of the work; Forbes returning to his station at the wheel, while Sir Edgar and Joe stood by the warp, in readiness to pay it out quickly, and to throw the life-buoys over clear of the rail.
Everything now depended upon the strength and skill of San Domingo.
The wreck, when I reached my post of observation in the rigging, was on our weather-bow, not more than twice our own length from us; and the barque, with her way already somewhat retarded by the backing of the main-topsail and the putting down of the helm, was slowly forging up to it, with her bows inclining toward the exact spot where the nine men were still huddled together in the main rigging, anxiously watching our approach and wondering what we were about to do. They saw that San Domingo was preparing to heave them a rope’s-end; but that did not very greatly enlighten them until Joe and Sir Edgar each raised a life-buoy to the rail, and prepared to throw it overboard. Then they got an inkling of our intent; and a feeble shout went up from among them.
Slowly, and more slowly still, the barque continued to forge ahead; and I began to fear that, in my anxiety to avoid an actual collision with the wreck, I had backed my topsail a second or two too soon, and that we should not, after all, get near enough to her to accomplish the rescue. Still, we had not wholly lost our way; and foot by foot—or rather, inch by inch—we continued to creep nearer and nearer to the wreck, until the negro, on the end of his spar, was soaring and swooping wildly within some fifty feet of the group of half-drowned men; and then our way stopped. This was the moment that San Domingo had been waiting for. Watching his opportunity, he seized upon the instant when the wreck and ourselves were both sunk in the trough of a sea, and therefore comparatively sheltered from the wind, when, with a single powerful swing of the coil round his head, he sent it whizzing straight and fair in among the group who were anxiously waiting for it.
“Get as far aft as you can, and then haul away upon the line!” I shouted.
One of them waved his hand to signify that he understood what I wanted; and then they all took hold of the line, and, with it grasped firmly in their hands, made their way cautiously in toward the hull, we watching their movements, meanwhile, in a state of the most intense anxiety and suspense. For now that we were within a biscuit-toss of them the appalling precariousness and peril of their situation became fully apparent to us; more completely so, indeed, than it probably was to the unfortunate fellows themselves. For, huddled together as they were in the rigging, they were sheltered to some extent by the hull of the brig, and were thus unable to clearly see and measure the stupendous proportions of the vast roaring mountains of foam-capped water that came hissing and swooping down upon them from to windward, each huge comber seemingly sentient with a full determination to overwhelm and engulf the already stricken and helpless fabric that lay prone and waterlogged at their mercy; while we, from the superior elevation of our buoyant deck, could look over and beyond the nearly submerged hull, and watch with breathless anxiety the swoop of every giant wave as it surged down upon the wreck and buried her in a blinding smother of seething, milk-white foam. But, beaten down, inert, and waterlogged as was the brig, her cargo was evidently of such a character as to impart a considerable measure of buoyancy to her; for though every sea that broke over her completely buried her for the moment, she invariably reappeared on the hinder slope of the baffled comber, apparently little or none the worse for her momentary submergence. Her triumphant survival, indeed, of these continuous and overwhelming onslaughts soon convinced me that her crew had little to fear from the prospect of her speedy foundering; their danger lay not in any such probability, but consisted in the likelihood of their being torn from their precarious hold in the rigging by every sea that swept and raged over them.