Then it was seen that Tom might have been hauled up without putting Ferrier in peril, for the rope was twice coiled under his arms and loosely knotted in front; he had taken that precaution after seeing Bob fall. Moreover, strange to say, his teeth were locked in the rope, for he had laid hold with the last effort of despair.
The wind volleyed; the darkness remained impenetrable, and every sea that came was a Niagara; yet the gallant smack stood to it, and Tom Lennard slumbered after the breath came back to him. His ribs had stood the strain of that rope, but he had really been semi-strangled, and he was marked with two lurid, extravasated bands round his chest. He never spoke before falling asleep; he only pressed Ferrier's hand and pointed, with a smile, upward.
"If it goes on like this, sir, there won't be many of us left by the morning."
"No, skipper. I hope the men will secure themselves like us. Mr. Lennard had a near thing. He has a jaw like a walrus, or his teeth must have gone."
So, in fitful whispers, the grim scraps of talk went on while the blare of the trumpets of the Night was loosened over the sea.
"Look—over the port-side, there. It's beginning."
Ferrier could make out nothing until the skipper gave him the exact line to look on. Then he saw a Something that seemed to wallow darkly on a dark tumble of criss-cross seas.
"He's bottom up, sir. If we'd been running and gone into him, we should have been at rest soon."
"How beautifully we are behaving, skipper. I suppose there's no chance of our going like that?"
"Not without something hits our rudder. We seem to have got away from the track now. While you were below, you see, I got her mainsail in, and that strip of sail has no more pull than a three-cloth jib. Please God, we may get through. If anything happens to my mainmast I shall give in—but it's a good spar."