“Can you hear?”
He could just catch three faint sounds in answer.
“As soon as a sailor can cross by the rope, send one,” he shouted, “I shall need help at this end. I have made fast the heavy rope. Shall I haul in the whip?”
There was a pause of a few seconds, but he counted on that. Then he felt three tugs on the thinner cord, and began to haul steadily. Soon, by the sagging of the main rope and the weight at the end of the whip, he realized that some one was making the transit.
Before long he discerned a figure coming towards him hand over hand along the rope. The man’s feet were caught midway by the seas boiling over the reef, but Maseden knew that the gallant fellow’s forward movement was never checked, and in a very little while the breathless chief officer was seated astride the mast beneath him.
“Who in the world are you?” demanded the newcomer; at any rate, he used words to that effect.
Maseden answered in kind, and explained his project; whereupon the chief officer seized the megaphone and bellowed the necessary instructions. On a given signal the two men hauled on the whip.
This time a figure lashed to a life-buoy, which, in turn, was tied to a pulley traveling on the guide-rope, came to them out of the darkness. It was a woman, hardly in her senses, yet able to obey when told to sit astride the mast and hold fast to a ring.
“We can hardly find room for five more people here,” shouted the chief officer. “Are you game to shin along the mast and see if that loose spar is practicable yet?”
“Yes,” said Maseden.