Glaucon dragged him roughly to his feet.
“I do not know your gods. Do not speak of their will to destroy us till the destruction falls. Do you love this woman?”
“Save her, let me twice perish.”
“Rouse yourself, then. One hope is left!”
“What hope?”
“A raft. We can cast a spar overboard. It will float us. You look strong,—aid me.”
The man rose and, thoroughly aroused, seconded the Athenian intelligently and promptly. The lurches of the merchantman told how close she was to her end. One of the seamen’s axes lay on the poop. Glaucon seized it. The foremast was gone and the mainmast, but the small boat-mast still stood, though its sail had blown to a thousand flapping streamers. Glaucon laid his axe at the foot of the spar. Two fierce strokes weakened so that the next lurch sent it crashing overboard. It swung in the mælstrom by its stays and the halyards of the sail. Tossing to and fro like a bubble, it was a fearful hope, but a louder rumbling from the hold warned how other hope had fled. The Barbarian recoiled as he looked on it.
“It can never float through this storm,” Glaucon heard him crying between the blasts, but the Athenian beckoned him onward.
“Leap!” commanded Glaucon; “spring as the mast rises on the next wave.”
“I cannot forsake her,” called back the man, pointing to the woman, who lay with flying hair between the capstans, helpless and piteous now that her lover was no longer near.