"It's long odds. Shove the boat out."
"Stop a bit, sir. Don't smile at an old man. Let's put it before the Lord. I never found that fail. Come, sir, and I'll pray for you."
"All cant," do you say, reader? Maybe, my friend, but I wish you and I could only have the heart that the words came from. The skipper bared his good grey head, and prayed aloud.
"Lord, Thou knowest we are asked to risk our lives. We are in Thine hands, and our lives are nothing. Say, shall we go? We shall know in our hearts directly if you tell us. Spare us, if it be Thy will; if not, still Thy will be done. We are all ready." After a pause the skipper said, "We'll do it, sir. Shove on your life-jacket. I'll take two life-buoys."
Lennard had kneeled with the others, and he said, "Shall I go?"
"You're too heavy, Tom. You'll over-drive the boat. I'll chance all."
Even to get into that boat was a terrible undertaking, for the smack was showing her keel, and the wall-siders made it likely that the boat would overbalance and fall backward like a rearing horse. Six times Ferrier had his foot on the rail ready to make his lithe, flying bound into the cockleshell; six times she was spun away like a foambell—returning to crash against the side as the smack hove up high. At last the doctor fairly fell over the rail, landed astride on the boat's gunwale, and from thence took a roll to the bottom and lay in the swashing water. Then delicately, cautiously, the skipper and his man picked their way with short, catchy strokes—mere dabs at the boiling foam.
"God bless you," Tom sang out, and the big fellow was touched when he heard the weak voices of the patients below, crying "God bless you!" with a shrillness that pierced above the hollow rattle of the wind, "There goes the boat up, perpendicularly as it appears. Ah! that's over her. No; it's broken aside. What a long time she is in coming up. Here's a cross sea! Ferrier's baling. Oh! it's too much. Oh! my poor friend! Here's a screamer! God be praised—she's topped it! Will the smack hit her? Go under his lee if you love me. They've got the rope now. In he goes, smash on his face! Just like him, the idiot—Lord bless his face and him!" Thomas hung on to the rigging and muttered thus, to his own great easement.
When Ferrier got up, he said, "Skipper, only once more of that for me. Once more, and no more after. If a raw hand had been there we should never have lived. Thank goodness you came! You deserve the Albert medal, and you shall have it too, if I can do anything."
The new patient was gasping heavily, and the whites of his eyes showed. The skipper explained: "You see, sir, he's got cold through with snow-water, and he sleeps in his wet clothes same as most of us; but he's not a strong chap, and it's settled him. He's as hard as a stone all round, and sometimes he's hot and sometimes he's cold."