His hunched back became a razor-back--chin touching his knees. And, like a wild-cat, he leaped upon her, pushing her aside--away.
Er-er-r-r! Pop! Snap went the parting ropes--one giving way after the other--their report as thunder in his ears, while, elastically doubling, he sprang from under the wildly swaying timber.
But it did not spare him. Like the kick of a thunder-cloud something grazed him, dealt him a glancing blow upon the shoulder, staggering enough to send his feet from under him--even as he hurled the girl aside.
He was beyond seeing that it was the massive tip of the ungrateful rib which--in feeling--he had been supporting.
Down he went, and the earth, in the shape of another grinning yellow timber--one of those lumber-reefs amid which he was wont to steer Blind Tim--rose up to meet him with such a warm welcome that he saw stars--a whole firmament of them, blood-red, and brighter than the twinkling galaxy which had adorned Sybil’s arm.
Then he lay very still and saw nothing--nothing--just outside the yellow curve of the monster rib, which lay still and prostrate, too, while the girl, her equilibrium likewise upset, rolled over upon the shavings, feeling that, according to a nursery rhyme of her childhood, “heaven and earth had fallen together” and crushed the upholding Atlas between them.
The first to reach him was a ship-carpenter. And according to the pell-mell disorder that broods over most accidents, it happened to be the pessimist, Libby Taber--Libby, who had seen him from the first in the light of a quitter!
He sprang from under the wildly swaying timber.
Now, there is nothing more pell-mell than the moods of a pessimist, not being strung upon the consistent thread of hope!