Without a moment's hesitation he allowed himself to be hoisted up to the basket and secured.
The Marquis had not yet recovered. His head was drooping on his chest; his arms were hanging down lifelessly at his side. When Cheyne had got into the basket, and the men were lashing him, he supported the drooping head, and pressed the mouth of the flask against the white lips of the insensible man. They were above the reach of large bodies of water, but they were still deluged with heavy sheets of spray.
The gale not only continued to blow, but increased in fury. Every wave flung tons of water over the deck, and the difficulty of maintaining a position on it increased each minute.
The Duke was still standing by the weather-rigging. With his right hand he hung on by a ratlin. Already the seams of the planks on which the men stood began to gape, and when the water rushed up from the after end of the yacht and struck against the forecastle bulkhead below, it squirted up through the opening seams.
Twice had the Duke been forced from his hold and cast against the mast. He declined to be lashed. But he was no longer young, and his hold on the ratlin was not nearly as firm as it might be. The very smallness of the line, while it enabled him to grasp it round completely, tended to numb the hand. He felt cold and wretched. The wind and wetting had begun to produce pains in his shoulder more intense than any he had felt before.
The signal had been given by the man at the mast-head to the men on shore to haul in, and already the baskets had begun to glide away from the yacht, when a shout of warning and terror came from the man at the mast-head.
"On deck there, hold on for your lives!" shouted the man aloft.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a huge wave, larger by far than any other which had struck the ill-fated yacht, burst upon her, and covered her with boiling torrents of tawny water, hissing foam, and swishing spray.
When the water cleared away two men were missing, a sailor and Reginald Francis Henry Cheyne, seventh Duke of Shropshire.
The men uttered a cry of dismay. Ropes were thrown, and two lifebuoys, which were secured to the pump-case. But neither the sailor nor the Duke was ever again seen alive by anyone on board that wreck. Before the nobleman, who left the Seabird as Marquis Southwold, and Charles Augustus Cheyne reached the shore, the Duke of Shropshire had died, and George Temple Cheyne, late Marquis of Southwold, was eighth Duke of Shropshire and virtual owner of four hundred thousand a year, five princely residences, and of all the power and influence of the great house.