Now that the job was over, he felt that he could never live to reach the deck, miles and miles—hundreds and hundreds of miles—below him. Step by step, though, he descended, fighting for his life against the sense numbness that was creeping over him. Limbs and intelligence seemed equally absent. He felt as if he were a disembodied being, floating through space on the wings of the storm.
He appeared to have no weight. Like a thistle bloom he thought that he might be blown where the winds wished. Conquering this feeling, it was succeeded by a leaden one. He was too heavy to move. His feet felt enormous, and heavy as a deep-sea diver’s weighted boots. His head was balloon-like and appeared to sway crazily on his shoulders.
But he still descended. Step by step, painfully, semi-consciously, the brain-sick, nauseated boy clung to the ratlines. On his grip depended his life, and this, in a dim, stupid sort of way, he realized.
If he could only reach the cross-trees! Here he could rest in comparative security for a while.
He must reach them, he must! He wasn’t going to die like this. A furious fighting spirit came over him. His head suddenly cleared; the deadly nausea left him; his limbs grew light.
Jack shouted aloud and came swiftly down. He called out defiantly at the storm. He raved, he yelled in wild delirium.
All at once he felt the cross-trees under his feet. With a last loud cry of triumph he sank down on the projecting steel pieces that formed, at any rate, a resting place.
Then came another wild swing of the ship, and a vicious gust.
Jack felt himself flung from the cross-trees and out into the dark void of the storm.
Down, down, down he went, straight as a stone toward the dark, black, raging vortex through which the ship was fighting.