“Then there’s four more here than you’ll want, sir,” rejoined Stanley, as the entire watch stepped forward.
The middy chose Herc and Ned and Stanley, and a man named Beesley. All were alert, strong and fearless, true types of Uncle Sam’s sailormen. In the meantime the boat had been unlashed and made ready for slinging. If it would have been dangerous to launch a boat on such a night from a battleship, how infinitely more so was it from the bounding, swaying deck of the destroyer! Never still for an instant, her military mast was cutting big arcs back and forth against the ragged sky.
But not one of those men hesitated a wink of an eyelid. Into the boat they piled, and the next instant the quadrant davits had dropped them overside into the turmoil!
A sharp “click” told that the falls had been automatically loosened.
“Stand by!” shouted the middy, who stood in the stern with the steering oar.
As he spoke, a mighty wave picked the boat up as if it had been a walnut shell and swept it dizzily away from the side of the destroyer. Off into the blackness it was carried before the oarsmen had time to stay it. The sharp command rang out again:
“Give way!”
Those four strong-backed, supple oarsmen bent to their sweeps as if they meant to split them. Far off, on their lee, they could see the bluish flame of the chemical buoy, now rising into view on the crest of a comber and now sinking out of sight in the dark trough of the turbulent seas. It was impossible to tell if there were a man clinging to it or not.
Bending forward, the middy scanned the wilderness of tumbling waters eagerly, while the oarsmen steadily struggled against the big seas down toward the lambent flame. Time and again it seemed as if one of the immense waves must crash down into the boat and overwhelm her. But the navy craft are built for just such work, and the boat kept comparatively dry amid the tempest.
“Hooray, boys!” came a sudden shout from the middy in the stern, “I see him!”