The shock, although a comparatively slight one, was sufficiently severe to arouse the sleepers, to whom the unwonted sensation and sound carried the idea of sudden disaster. Jim and Grundy rushed on deck, where they found Morley Jones already on the bulwarks with a boat-hook, shouting for aid, while Stanley Hall assisted him with an oar to push the sloop off what appeared to be the topmast and cross-trees of a vessel, with which she was entangled.
Jim and Grundy each seized an oar, and, exerting their strength, they were soon clear of the wreck.
“Well,” observed Jim, wiping his brow with the sleeve of his coat, “it’s lucky it was but a light topmast and a light breeze, it can’t have done us any damage worth speaking of.”
“I don’t know that,” said Jones. “There are often iron bolts and sharp points about such wreckage that don’t require much force to drive ’em through a ship’s bottom. Take a look into the hold, Jim, and see that all’s right.”
Jim descended into the hold, but immediately returned, exclaiming wildly—
“Why, the sloop’s sinkin’! Lend a hand here if you don’t want to go down with her,” he cried, leaping towards the boat.
Stanley Hall and Grundy at once lent a hand to get out the boat, while the fish-merchant, uttering a wild oath, jumped into the hold as if to convince himself of the truth of Jim’s statement. He returned quickly, exclaiming—
“She must have started a plank. It’s rushing in like a sluice. Look alive, lads; out with her!”
The boat was shoved outside the bulwarks, and let go by the run; the oars were flung hastily in, and all jumped into her as quickly as possible, for the deck of the Nora was already nearly on a level with the water. They were not a minute too soon. They had not pulled fifty yards from their late home when she gave a sudden lurch to port and went down stern foremost.
To say that the party looked aghast at this sudden catastrophe, would be to give but a feeble idea of the state of their minds. For some minutes they could do nothing but stare in silence at the few feet of the Nora’s topmast which alone remained above water as a sort of tombstone to mark her ocean grave.