The girl had raised her head, and was pointing toward the sea. Then she sprang to her feet with a scream.
"A man! A man! Save him!"
As she spoke a huge wave rolled in, and out of it struggled, on hands and knees, a human figure. He looked wildly up and around, and lay clinging with outstretched arms over the edge of the rock.
"Save him!" she shrieked again, as twenty men rushed forward--and stopped short. The man was fully thirty yards from them, but between them and him stretched a long, ghastly crack, some ten feet wide, with seething cauldrons within.
Ere they could nerve themselves for action, the wave had come, half-burying the wretched mariner, and tearing across the chasm.
The schoolmistress took one long look, and as the wave retired, rushed after it to the very brink of the chasm, and flung herself on her knees.
"The wave has carried him across the crack, and she's got him!" screamed old Willis. And he sprang upon her, and caught her round the waist.
"Now, if you be men!" shouted he, as the rest hurried down.
"Now, if you be men; before the next wave comes!" shouted big Jan, the fisherman. "Hands together, and make a line!" And he took a grip with one hand of the old man's waistband, and held out the other for who would to seize.
Strong hand after hand was clasped, and strong knee after knee dropped almost to the rock, to meet the coming rush of water.