As he clung there, catching his breath and coughing the salt water from his lungs, he recollected with a flash of satisfaction that he had his rubber gloves in his pocket. These gloves are used for handling wires in which current might be on, and are practically shock-proof. Jack knew that he would have to handle the aërials when he got aloft, and if he had not his gloves with him, he would have stood the risk of getting a severe shock.
With one more glance down, in which he could perceive a dim, wet radiance surrounding the ship like a halo, proceeding from such lights as still were aglow on board, the boy resumed his climb.
The most perilous part of it still lay before him. So far, he had climbed a good broad “ladder”—the ratlines stretched between the three stout steel shrouds. From the cross-trees to the top of the slender mast, there was but a single-breadth foothold between the two shrouds running from the tip of the foremast to the cross-trees.
Far above him, cut off from his vision by darkness and flying scud, Jack knew that the footpath he had to follow narrowed to less than a foot in breadth. At that height the vicious kicking of the mast must be tremendous.
It was equivalent to being placed on the end of a giant, pliable whip while a Gargantuan Brobdingnagian driver tried to flick you off.
But Jack gritted his teeth, and through the screeching wind began the last lap of his soul-rasping ascent.
He was flung about till his head swam. His ascent was pitifully slow and tortuous. The reeling mast seemed to have a vicious determination to hurtle him through space into the vortex of waters below him, over which he was swung dizzily hither and yon.
But at last, somehow, with reeling brain, cut and bleeding hands and exhausted limbs, he reached the summit and stretched out cramped fingers for the aërials.
With the other hand he clung to the shrouds, and with legs wrapped round them in a death-like grip, he was dashed back and forth through midair like a shuttle-cock.