Like a banshee on a broomstick that sail kited off to leeward, and I was left hanging desperately to the shrouds, with the wind booming in my ears so that I could not even hear the angry roaring of the skipper below.
And all the time this question kept thumping in my head: “Where was Thankful Polk?”
Chapter V
In Which We See a Ship Sailing in the Sky
I had forgotten my own peril. Indeed, so disturbed was I for the moment for my chum’s safety that I cared nothing for the lost sail. I yelled for Thank at the top of my voice, though doubtless the shrieking of the wind drowned all sound of my cries. And Thank, for all I knew, was already far to leeward, fighting in that tempestuous sea.
And then suddenly, through a rift in the flying spray that stung my face so cruelly and almost blinded me, I beheld something swinging from the ropes on which I stood. The ship was almost on her beam-ends and the waves broke just below me. There Thank hung by his foot, which had twisted in the ropes and was held firm, his head and shoulders buried in the foaming sea at every plunge of the laboring Gullwing!
I shrieked again and, clinging with one hand with a desperate grip, I sought to seize him as he swung, pendulum-like, to and fro. I could not reach him.
But now the brave ship was righting herself. We rose higher and higher from the leaping waves. Thank swung back and forth and, as we came inboard, I feared he would batter his poor brains out against the wire cables, or against some spar.
He was unconscious. He was helpless. And it seemed as though I was helpless as well. Those few momentous seconds showed me plainly how deeply I loved the youth who had been my comrade in adventure and labor and peril during these last few months. I had never had a chum before of my own age—not one whom I had really cottoned to. Thank was as dear to me as a brother would have been.
As we rose higher and higher another fear smote me. If his foot loosened now and he fell, he would be dashed to death upon the deck below. In my struggles my hand found a loose rope. I hauled it in quickly, hung to the spar by my elbows while I formed a noose in the end, and was unsuccessfully trying to get this over Thank’s head and shoulders when another man sprang to the footrope beside me.