I sprang below, hauled him up by the collar of his jacket, and drove him with both hands to his stern up to the wheel.
"Hold on to these spokes!" I roared. And then Cornish and I ran staggering along the poop.
"Get the end of the starboard main-brace to the capstan!" I cried to him. "Look alive! ship one of the bars ready!"
And then I scrambled as best I could down on the main-deck, and went floundering forward through the water that was now washing higher than my ankle to the fore-topsail halliards, which I let go.
Crack! whiz! away went the sail, strips of it flying into the sea like smoke.
I struggled back again on to the poop, but the violence of the wind was almost more than I could bear: it beat the breath out of me; it stung my face just as if it were filled with needles; it roared in my ears; it resembled a solid wall; it rolled me off my knees and hands, and obliged me to drag myself against it bit by bit, by whatever came in my road to hold on to.
Cornish lay upon the deck with the end of the main-brace in his hands, having taken the necessary turns with it around the capstan.
I laid my weight against the bar and went to work, and scrambling and panting, beaten half dead by the wind, and no more able to look astern without protecting my eyes with my hands than I could survey any object in a room full of blinding smoke, I gradually got the mainyard round, but found I had not the strength to bring it close to the mast.
I saw the boatswain speak to the steward, who left the wheel to help me with his weight against the capstan bar.
I do think at that moment that the boatswain transformed himself into an immovable figure of iron. Heaven knows from what measureless inner sources he procured the temporary strength: he clenched his teeth, and the muscles in his hands rose like bulbs as he hung to the wheel and pitted his strength against the blows of the seas upon the rudder.