It was far worse than the wave that had nearly carried Jerry James to his death.
But it did not last as long. It struck with swift savagery, lifting Sandy and Jerry and the rest of them from their feet. It sought to tear them free of the rail and drive them aft and into the water. But that great crushing blow and terrible tug was only of a few seconds’ duration, and then it was gone.
Sandy looked around. Water was spilling back over the sides of the James Kennedy, but at the rail, where there had been ten men, there were now only eight.
Two men had been washed overboard, one of them a hammer man.
But there was little time to dwell upon the horror of those missing figures at the rail.
Mr. Davis had lost his glasses. The wave had torn them from his head. The tall deck officer peered wildly about him. He had backed from the rail, digging furiously at his eyes to clear them of water. Now, as he looked around him on the deck of the heaving ship, it was plain that he had lost his bearings. He took a step forward. Another. Then, rapidly, two more. He was walking toward the rail!
Involuntarily, Sandy and Jerry took two steps toward him. But they were too far away.
Their friend Sam wasn’t.
The stocky seaman with the muscles like steel hawsers swiftly shot out a clutching hand and stopped his superior officer before he drowned himself.
“You’ll have to go back, sir!” Sam shouted above the wind. “You can’t stay out here blinded like that. Here,” he shouted at one of the men, “help Mr. Davis below.”