“How far off?”
“A couple of cables’ lengths, I guess, Cap’en. Better send a hand forrud in the chains to sling him a rope, or we’ll pass him by in a minnit.”
“Right you are,” was the reply of the good-hearted skipper, as he rushed along to the forecastle himself with a coil over his arm, that he might fling it to the man in the water as soon as he floated within reach.
It was a task that had to be deftly performed, for the ship was forging through the sea, and plunging her bowsprit under water as she rose and fell in her progress, one minute describing a half-circle through the air with her forefoot as she yawed to the heavy rolling waves, the next diving deep down into the billows and tossing up tons of water over her forecastle, where the skipper stood, watching his opportunity, as the broken spars, on which he could now plainly see that the figure of a man was lashed, swept nearer and nearer on the crest of a wave that bore them triumphantly on high above the storm-wrack and foam.
While the wreckage was yet out of reach he could notice, too, that the figure was perfectly motionless and still.
What the topman had taken to be an outstretched hand, waving a handkerchief or some fluttering object, was only the ragged end of a piece of the sail that was still attached to the yard and a part of the topmast of some vessel, which had been torn away by the violence of the gale and cast adrift, with the unfortunate seaman who was clinging to it.
“Poor chap!” thought the American captain aloud, “I’m afraid there’s not much life left in him now; but if there is any, I reckon we’ll save him.” And, as he uttered the words, he dexterously threw one end of the
coil of rope, which he had already formed into a running bowline knot, over the spars as they were swept past the side of the Susan Jane, while he fastened the other end fast in-board, slackening out the line gradually, so as not to bring it up too tight all at once and so jerk the man off the frail raft.
“Easy there,”—he called out to the men aft. “Let her head off a bit now, and brail up that mainsail again. Easy! Belay!”