"Put the wheel down, Jerry, and let her head come up in the wind." Raising his voice a little, he then orders the after-yards braced aback, and the fore stay-sail sheet raised.
While one watch is obeying this order, others of the crew clear away the port quarter boat. But when there is a call to man it, one and all hesitate, for verily it is venturing into the very jaws of death.
Eph Jackson suddenly leaves the lee wheel, and follows the plucky little second mate, who is shipping the rudder.
"If that young chap is goin'," mutters Bob Stacy, "blowed if I'll hang back;" and in another moment the boat is manned, and afloat in darkness and storm.
Meanwhile, what of Ned Rand? This: As his head disappeared under the icy waves he felt as though a terrible grasp had seized his ankles and was dragging him deeper and deeper despite his efforts to rise.
"It's my heavy boots," was the thought which flashed like lightning through his brain; and thanks to their size, he slipped them off one at a time, coming to the surface just as it seemed to him that his lungs were about to burst through holding his breath so long. Dashing the water from his eyes, he struck out manfully, yet with a sense of utter hopelessness, when his hand struck the grating, to which he clung convulsively. He saw rockets and blue-lights thrown up from the ship's deck, and shouted himself hoarse, for the Emerald was not a cable's-length distant.
But as he felt an awful numbing chill steal over him, against which he vainly struggled, he was dragged in over the bow of the Emerald's boat by the nervous arms of the bow oar—Mr. Ephraim Jackson.
"Darned if he ain't lost them boots a'ready!" exclaimed Eph, as the insensible boy was laid face down in the bottom of the boat.
Well, through God's mercy and Mr. Kendall's skill, they reached the ship in safety, but Eph—or indeed any of the boat's crew—will never forget the terrible pull, or how near they were being crushed by the ship's side in taking the boat inboard.
Ned was rubbed, filled to the throat with hot coffee, and stowed away in his bunk, so that by morning he was all right again, but, to his great joy, was excused from further duty, the ship being now off old Boston Light.