The three of us got a hold of the keel, and a sea helping us, we righted her, swaying down upon the little fabric with the strength of the madness that fights for life; but in righting she struck one of the men under, and he went down like a shot whilst I and the other got into the boat.
A large copper baler attached to a lanyard lay at the bottom. I plunged my hand down, groped for, and found it, and fell with fury to casting out the water, the other baling with his sou'-wester with all his might. The sea repeatedly broke over us, but we toiled with superhuman effort for our lives. I believe the filled boat would have sunk under our united weight but for a couple of empty breakers secured in the bows and aft. We laboured with rage, flashing the water out of the boat, and presently she was showing some little height of side. Then to slenderly provide against a second surprise of capsizal which would signify certain death to us, I lashed the two spare oars that were under the thwarts to the painter and chucked them overboard; this brought the boat head to sea, and we went on baling.
The spite of the squall had gone out of the wind, but it was snowing heavily, and strain my sight as I would I could see nothing of the ship. In a flaw in the thick feathery fall I caught sight of the red tongue of bunting; the buoy then was about a cable's length distant; it was closed out quickly and all became a tumbling, gyrating blackness; yet I had drawn some faint comfort from the sight of it. I guessed the ship could not be far off and that she must spy us the instant it cleared, which might happen at any minute. Meanwhile we baled for our lives.
My companion was an able seaman named Tom Friend. After he had been throwing out the water for some while, when the boat was perhaps still about a quarter full, I meanwhile baling with the same sort of fury that possesses a drowning man when he clutches and catches and beats in the air for life, he said to me:
'Mr. Selby, if we aren't rescued soon I'm a dead man.'
'No, no, keep up your spirits,' I shouted. 'They'll have us. Bale, man. We must keep afloat to be picked up.'
He went to work afresh with his sou'-wester, stooping and flinging; the wind smote the brine into smoke as we hove it over the side. We did not cease till but a little water was left in the bottom of the boat, and we sat and gasped and stared about us.
I know not how long this business had occupied. It seemed to me that the shadow of the night was already in the air. It may have been no more than the darkness of the thick black cloud out of which the snow was tumbling in immense flakes. All the time I was expecting to see the dye of the ship's fabric oozing out of the whiteness, plunging out of the smother into her clear shape within easy earshot of us; but that did not happen.
After we had been in this situation about two hours Friend put his two hands together, and began to waggle his body as he sat on the midship thwart fronting me; his face was blue. He made shocking grimaces of anguish and fell a-moaning most piteously, crying: 'Oh, the cold! Oh, the cold! Oh, Jesus, support me! I can't stand it!'
Though my own sufferings were inexpressible, I was still sensible of a good stock of vitality; but I cannot tell why I should have better resisted the cold than Friend, who was a lump of a man, broad-backed as a table, though a little stout. I was soaked to the skin, and coat and breeches were already frozen hard upon me; they cracked when I stirred as glass might. The thwarts were glazed and ice half an inch thick sheathed the timber.