“Below there!” he sang out. “How are the poor fellows? Are they alive, Haldane?”
“They are in a bad way, sir,” I replied. “They’ve got the life left in them and that’s all, I’m afraid!”
“Neither dead, then?”
“No, sir.”
“Bravo! ‘whilst there’s life there’s hope,’” cried the skipper in a cheery tone. “Are they quite helpless, do you think, Haldane—I mean quite unable to climb up the side?”
“Quite unable, sir,” I answered. “One’s unconscious, and I don’t think the other could move an inch if he tried!”
“Then we must haul ’em up,” said Captain Applegarth, turning to Masters, who had popped his head over the bulwarks and was now looking down into the boat, like the rest of the hands on board. “I say, bo’sun, can’t you rig up a chair or something that we can lower down for the poor fellows?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” responded old Masters, drawing in his head from the bulwarks and disappearing from my view as I looked upwards from the stern-sheets, where I was still holding up the slowly-recovering man. “I’ll rig up a whip from the foreyard and we can let down a hammock for ’em, tricing up one at a time.”
“Stay, cap’en,” cried Mr Fosset as the boatswain went bustling off, I suppose, though of course from my position I could not see him, to carry out this plan of his. “The davits here amidship are all right, as well as the tackle of our cutter that had got washed away in the gale. Wouldn’t it be easier to let down the falls, sir, and run up the boat all standing with the poor fellows in her as they are?”
“By George, the very thing, Fosset!” exclaimed the skipper, accepting the suggestion with alacrity. “It will save the poor fellows a lot of jolting, and be all the easier for us, as you say. Besides, the little craft will come in handy for us, as we’re rather short of boats just now!”