“Boat! Boat! Launch the quarterboat!”
Our men sprang to their stations; the young second mate gave his orders quick and sharp. Captain Bowditch did not gainsay him. Mr. Jim Barney had it all his own way.
His crew—the same that had manned the boat when she had picked up the castaways—quickly took their places in the craft. She was lowered with a plop into the sea.
“Give way, men!”
They bent to the oars like giants. The boat shot across the sea to the fast sinking Seamew. I held the spokes of the Gullwing’s wheel idly and watched. Indeed, the tug coming up to hook us attracted no attention from anybody aboard our ship at that moment.
The Seamew was wallowing deep in the water now. Her head was under and her stern was kicking up. She was about to dive like a duck to the bottom.
Suddenly the air-pressure below blew off her forward hatch. Instantly the waves broke across the deck and the water poured into the open hatchway.
Swiftly and more swiftly she sank. When our boat came to the hulk, she presented a steep side for one to mount from the small boat.
“Alf! Alf!” we heard our second mate yell. We could not hear that there was an answer from the man under the wreckage of the topmast.
“Hold her in close, boys!” commanded Mr. Jim Barney. “Give me that boathook!”