“Wreck ahoy!” cried the coxswain of the boat, and the cry, borne towards them by the gale, fell upon the ears of those on the mast like the voice of Hope shouting “Victory!” over the demon Despair.
“Cheer up, Lucy! Ho! comrades, look alive, here comes the lifeboat!”
Bax accompanied these words with active preparations for heaving a rope and otherwise facilitating their anticipated escape. Guy was the first to respond to the cry. Having placed himself in a very exposed position in order that his person might shelter Lucy Burton, he had been benumbed more thoroughly than his comrades, but his blood was young, and it only wanted the call to action to restore him to the full use of his powers and faculties. Not so with the missionary. He had become almost insensible, and, but for the effort to protect his child which animated and sustained him, must certainly have fallen into the sea. Some of the men, too, were utterly helpless. Their stiffened hands, indeed, maintained a death-like gripe of the ropes, but otherwise they were quite incapable of helping themselves.
As for Lucy, she had been so well cared for and protected from the bitter fury of the wind, that, although much exhausted, terrified, and shaken, she was neither so be-numbed nor so helpless as some of her less fortunate companions.
Presently the lifeboat was close on the lee side of the mast, and a cheer burst from her crew when they saw the number of survivors on the cross-trees.
“Look out!” cried the man in the bow of the boat, as he swung a heavily-loaded stick round his head, and flung it over the mast. The light line attached to this was caught by Bax, and by means of it a stout rope was drawn from the boat to the mast of the “Nancy” and made fast.
And now came the most dangerous and difficult part of the service. Besides the danger of the mast being broken by the violence of the increasing storm and hurled upon the lifeboat, an event which would have insured its destruction, there was the risk of the boat herself being stove against the mast by the lashing waves which spun her on their white crests or engulfed her in their black hollows, as if she had been a cork. The greatest care was therefore requisite in approaching the wreck, and when this was accomplished there still remained the difficulty of getting the exhausted crew into the boat.
Had they all been young and strong like Bax or Guy, they could have slid down the rope at the risk of nothing worse than a few bruises; but with several of them this method of escape was impossible;—with Lucy and her father it was, in any circumstances, out of the question. A block and tackle was therefore quickly rigged up by Bluenose, by which they were lowered.
Poor Lucy had not the courage to make the attempt until one or two of the seamen had preceded her, it seemed so appalling to be swung off the mast into the black raging chaos beneath her feet, where the lifeboat, shrouded partially in darkness and covered with driving spray, appeared to her more like a phantom than a reality.
“Come, Miss Lucy,” said Bax, tenderly, “I’ll fasten the rope round myself and be swung down with you in my arms.”