“Lively, men, or they’ll drown!” yelled the captain.
Hardy and intrepid as were the life-savers and the volunteers who had assembled to help them, they paused a moment now. It seemed impossible that the two in the buoy could be pulled ashore in time to be saved.
Over them broke great seas, the waves hissing and foaming as though angry at being cheated of their prey. The storm-swept waters seemed to seize on the rope, as though to pull it beneath the billows. The anchor that held the rope which passed over the “shears” seemed to be pulling out of the sand packed around it.
“Come on, men!” cried the captain. “Take a brace now, and we’ll have ’em ashore in a jiffy!”
“But she’s slipping!” cried a grizzled seaman. “She can’t hold any longer. The whole business is going!”
“She can’t go until we git ’em ashore!” yelled the captain of the life-savers. “I won’t let her! Here, Jim Black, you mosey back there and pile more sand around that anchor. Now then, men, pull as though you meant it. What! You’re not going to have it said that you let a little cat’s paw of wind like this beat you; are you?”
Something of the captain’s courage seemed to infuse itself into his men. They had been half-hearted before, but they were brave now. Once more they ranged themselves on the rope that was used to haul the buoy from the ship to shore. It was as though the waves had tried to intimidate them, and had been bidden defiance.
The weight of the two persons in the buoy was almost too much. The waves had a doubly large surface against which to break, and well the captain knew that there was a limit to the strain to which the tackle could be subjected. Once the main rope leading from the anchor to the ship, on which cable the buoy ran, parted, and nothing could save those last two lives. No wonder the captain wanted haste.
“Haul away!” he bellowed through the roar of the wind, using his hands as a trumpet. “Haul away, men!”
His companions braced themselves in the shifting sand. They bent their backs. Their arms swelled into bunches of muscles that had been trained in the hard school of the sea.