“Ah, I see you guessed what I was after,” said the captain noticing this. “If we lash ourselves to the rigging here, it will save us a world of exertion and trouble, besides leaving our hands free for other purposes.”
“Aye, aye, sir, I know’d what you want,” responded Moggridge, and passing down the pieces of rope as he cut them off, all of us were pretty soon well secured from being washed away, each man helping to tie up his neighbour in turn.
“Golly, massa, dis am a purdicafirment!” ejaculated Jake, grinning as usual, and with his ebony face shining with the spray; “I’se ’gin feel want grub—um precious hungry.”
“I am afraid that’ll not be our only want, my poor fellow,” said Captain Miles in a melancholy voice; but rousing himself a minute afterwards he added more cheerfully, “Wait till the sea gets down, and then we’ll try to improve our condition. I wonder, though, how these other fellows are getting on in the chains amidships? Jackson, ahoy!”
“Hullo, sir,” came a faint hail in answer, from amid the breaking seas further on ahead of us, where only a black spot of a head could be seen occasionally emerging from the mass of encircling foam.
“Are you all right there?” sang out the captain.
“We’re alive, sir; but nearly tired out,” replied Jackson in a low weak tone.
“Can’t you try, man, to work your way aft and join us,” urged Captain Miles, comprehending how exhausted the young seaman and his companions there must be. “There’s plenty of room here for all of us, and you’ll not be so much worked about by the sea.”
“The waves are too strong for us, sir,” cried out the other, but his voice now seeming to have a little more courage in it, for he added after a bit, “I think we can manage it, though, if you will make fast the bight of the topsail sheet and heave the end to us. It will serve us to hold on by as we pass along the bulwarks.”
“All right, my hearty,” answered Captain Miles, he and a couple of the sailors beside him doing as Jackson had suggested.