I was straining my sight into the whirling gray thickness over the bow, the ship then being under two close-reefed topsails and stern main trysail, and surging over the high swell and through the broken rugged seas at about five knots; when a man who was descending the starboard fore-shrouds with a coil of rigging round his neck missed a ratline with his foot and slapped at another with his hand: it parted at the seizing and he fell overboard backwards.
In the swift glance I had shot, my sight being already bent that way, I saw the ratline he had clapped hold of stand out from the shroud like a bar of steel.
I roared 'Man overboard!' and shouted to the fellow at the wheel to put the helm hard down. In the same breath I caught a lifebuoy off its pin and flung it at the body of the man who was then floating on the top of a swelling fold within a pistol-shot astern, fast sliding off. This buoy, like others in the ship—a device of the captain's—when it struck the water freed a red staff with a length of red bunting attached: the staff stood up on the buoy and the streamer like a tongue of fire blowing out made a beacon for a swimmer as well as for a boat in daylight.
Meanwhile the second mate was yelling for all hands and bawling 'Man overboard!' and shouting for seamen to lay aft and heave the vessel to. The captain came running up on deck. I called the tragic news to him, pointing aft, and then sprang for a jolly-boat as we termed the thing, which hung in davits upon the starboard quarter. A number of men came crowding around; the boat was swiftly cleared away, and I and three sailors jumped into her.
'Keep all fast till way is lost,' shouted the captain. 'Stand by to unhook handsomely or she'll drown ye.'
In a few minutes, which seemed as long as months, the boat sank to the water's edge and was waterborne: a sea lifted her half-way to her davits again; in that upward rush we unhooked, got oars over, and away we went for the red streamer which I could see faintly glimmering through a mist of spume.
She was a fat lubberly boat, better for this work than our longer whale-ended quarter-boats. She jumped like something alive and distracted, sometimes sped end on, made with headlong plunges into the valleys, sweeping up the acclivity with her nose to the sky, doing her work dryly but so wildly that the men could scarcely plunge their blades for a drag upon her. A couple of spare oars were lashed along her bottom under the thwarts. I had nearly cut them adrift, meaning to help the others, fisherman-fashion, with one, and I never cease to thank my God I did nothing of the sort.
I steered for the man, but he was not to be seen. I had never from the moment of marking him fall doubted that he had plumbed the bottom like a lead, weighted as he was with heavy sea boots, painted clothes, and a coil of rigging round his neck; but it was not to be admitted: the man was overboard, the ship was to be hove-to, and the poor fellow searched for and saved if so willed.
All in a breath, when we were within fifty strokes of the streaming red flag, the boat was capsized on an apex of pyramidal sea, that poled her sheerly bottom up at the instant that a blinding snow-squall came seething along, whitening the water into hissing salt, and thickening down the sea within a biscuit-toss. This I had been observing at the very instant the boat was flung keel up, and I recollect that I carried the memory of that scene of snow-squall under water, scarce realising but that I was in a dream, happening as it did too swiftly to give the mind time to catch a hold on reality.
When I came to the surface I was bubbling and spitting in a smother of froth hard against the side of the boat. There were two others. I got my senses quickly and sputtering the brine out of my mouth roared, 'We must right her. We can't hold on. We shall freeze off her dead men in five minutes. Together now.'