“It sounded like a voice, some one hailing.”
“I think I know whose voice it is,” said the captain. He himself had almost yielded to the delusion. It was distressing to find the same eery symptom of speedy breakdown in his old friend, the chief officer.
Both men listened, nevertheless, and were convinced. In silence they went out into the open, walking stealthily. Each knew that any undue movement might send the remains of the ship headlong to the reef. They strained their eyes in the only possible direction from which a voice might have come—the scrap of forecastle, sixty feet nearer the headland, or, incredible as it seemed, the headland itself. They could see nothing. Maseden’s body was not only in line with the receding angle of the foremast, but that piece of the wreck was merged in the gloom of the towering rock.
Maseden saw them, however, and shouted again, striving his uttermost now that he had attracted attention.
With each effort at speech his voice was becoming stronger. Though it was useless to think of conveying an intelligible message through the uproar of wind and water, he fancied he could get into communication with the inmates of the chart-room, provided they were on the alert. In effect, he had a knife, and was surrounded by an abundance of tangled cordage, and it would be a strange thing if after so many years of active life on a South American ranch he could not cast a weighted lasso as far as the bridge.
He began fashioning the necessary coil at once, working with feverish haste, because his refuge was on the move again, and ever towards the land. A trial cast fell short, as he had not allowed enough lee-way for the wind. He was gathering up the rope preparatory to another effort when a great voice boomed at him from the shadows:
“You have no chance here. You are as well off where you are. If you hear me, hail three times!”
The captain was using a megaphone.
Maseden yelled “Hi!” three times, thinking the short, sharp syllable would carry best. Then, with splendid judgment, he threw the lasso in a lateral parabola that landed its end across the rail of the bridge, where it was promptly made fast by the first officer.