"How many have you aboard?"
"Eighteen!"
"You must slide down on a rope over the stern; we can't go alongside," continued the first lieutenant.
"Ay, ay, sir!" responded the captain of the ship. "I have two women and two children on board."
"You must lower them in slings," added Haven, prompted by Mr. Fluxion.
The people on board the wreck went to work, and one of the women was lowered into each boat at the same time. A long loop was made in the end of the rope, and the woman sat down in the bight of it, holding on to the line with her hands. At a moment when the sea favored the movement, the boats were hauled up close to the ship's stern, the passenger caught by two of the crew, and hauled on board. A boy and a girl were let down in the same manner. The captain, mates, and seamen came down the rope hand over hand.
Each boat now had nine passengers, who were stowed in the stern sheets and on the bottom. The ropes from the ship were cast off, and the oarsmen were ordered to give way. The barge and the gig rose and fell, now leaping up on the huge billows, and then plunging down deep into the trough of the sea; but they had been well trimmed, and though the comb of the sea occasionally broke into them, drenching the boys with spray, the return to the Young America was safely effected.
"How happens it that you are all boys?" asked the captain of the wrecked ship, who was in Paul Kendall's boat.
"That's the Academy Ship," replied the second lieutenant.
"The what?" exclaimed the captain.