"Doctor's got him below, skipper." Poor Bob had tried to save himself with his right arm, and his hand had been bent backwards over, and doubled back on his forearm. Bob was settled for the rest of the gale. Lewis soon had the broken limb put up, and Bob stolidly smoked and pondered on the inequalities of life. Why was he, and not another, told off to spring up that reeling mizen into a high breeze that ended by mastering him, and flinging him as if he had been a poor wrestler matched with a champion? Here he was—crippled.
"Well, Bob, if this is a specimen, we shall see something when it clears."
"Yes, doctor; you may say that, you may. I never see nothing like it. If you give a man ten hundred thousand goulden sovereigns, and you says, 'Tell me directly you see anything comin',' he couldn't. When I was on the look-out, I held this 'ere hand, as is broken, up before my eyes, and I couldn't see it, sir—and that's the gospel, as I'm here!"
"Do you think we're out of the track of ships?" "I know no more than Adam, sir. Hello! what's that?"
"Up here, sir—up, quick!"
Ferrier's heart jumped as he thought—"Tom."
"Haul on here, sir, with us. God be praised, he took his rope over with him. Haul, for the Lord's sake! Now! now!"
Ferrier lashed at his work in a fury of effort: a sea sent him on his knees, and yet he lay hack against the inrush of water, and hauled with all the weight of body and arms.
"Haul, my men! A good life is at the end of that line. Haul! the ice may congeal his pulses before you get at him! Haul! oh, haul!"
The skipper sprang to the grating abaft the wheel.