“Must’ve gone down from the walk here, in the plunge of the storm. A wonder he can still holler, after being hung down there all this time!” said Olof Valchen.
“Ropes!”
“Down the ladder there!”
“We’re coming!”
A jumble of shouts echoed through all parts of the ship.
Lee was one of the first men to go swinging down a long narrow ladder into the shadowy interlacing of beams and girders. Above the catwalk were lights, but down here was semi-darkness, and a maze of struts that must be threaded.
The thin wailing guided him. The gleam of his pocket flashlight glinted on a pair of eyes far below.
Then he was there, all the way to the ship’s bottom, and touching his hands to a body wedged between girders. As Lee’s hands made contact, he gasped at what he found. And Olaf Valchen, who was the next man to get there, echoed his gasp.
Then the two of them, sung out: “We’ve got the rope on! Haul away!”
What the men on the planking far above hauled up to safety and a place in the friendly glow of lights, was no man at all, but Yiggy, the little dog. A battered and banged-up Yiggy, but all there and very much alive, as the wagging of his stub of a tail indicated.