They carried their makeshift raft to the settling nose of the ship, laid it down, mounted it, and let the next wave carry them off. Ramsay felt a turning nausea in the pit of his stomach. As the raft went over the rail, the man called Pete was swept from it. Only the engineer stayed on, clinging desperately as he was washed out into the angry lake. In a second or two he had disappeared.
Captain Schultz rolled frightened eyes and said to Ramsay, "Get a door, or hatch cover, an' ride that."
Suiting his actions to his words, Captain Schultz seized a fire axe that was hanging near and pounded the wheelhouse door from its hinges. He dragged the door to the rail, threw it into the lake, and jumped after it. The deck hand wrestled with a hatch cover, finally pried it loose, and rode that away.
Ramsay was left alone on the sinking Holter. He tried to keep a clear head, but he could not help an overwhelming fear. This was nothing he had ever faced before and now, facing it, he did not know what to do. Finding anything that would float and riding it away seemed to be the answer. Then the little horse bugled and he knew that he was not alone.
Water crept around his feet as he made his way across the deck to the cage. He put his hand on the bar, and as soon as he did that the little horse thrust a soft, warm nose against it. He muzzled Ramsay's hand with almost violent intensity. All his life he had depended upon men for everything. Now, in this peril, men would not desert him.
Softly Ramsay stroked the soft muzzle, but only for a second. The Holter was going down fast. Soon, as the gloomy deck hand had forecast, she would be on the bottom of Lake Michigan. There was no time to lose. Ramsay unlatched the door of the cage, opened it, and when he did that the horse walked out.
He stayed very near to the boy, fearing to leave, and once or twice bumped Ramsay with his shoulder. Ramsay studied the angry lake, and looked back at the horse. Again he glanced out on the stormy water. There was nothing else in sight. Those who, by one way or another, hoped to reach shore were already lost in swirling sheets of rain. Ramsay bit his lower lip so hard that he drew blood.
The men had either jumped, or else had merely ridden over the rail on a wave that set the decks awash, but the horse could not do that. There was real danger of his breaking a leg, or becoming otherwise injured, if he tried. Ramsay turned and caught up the axe with which Captain Schultz had stricken down the door.
The black horse crowded with him, afraid to be alone, and the boy had to go around him to get back to the rail. The horse pushed close to him again and Ramsay spoke soothingly, "Easy. Take it easy now."
He raised the axe and swung it, and felt its blade bite deeply into the wooden rail. He swung again and again, until he had slashed through it, then moved ten feet to one side, toward the rail's supporting post, and cut it there. The severed section was whisked into the wave-tormented lake as a match stick disappears in a whirlpool. Ramsay threw the axe back onto the Holter's sinking deck and stepped aside.