ith
Nick Leary close above him, another man already on the cross-trees and
yet another in mid-air on the hawser. The skipper reached the slanted
deck and slewed down into the starboard scuppers, snatched hold of a
splintered fragment of the bulwarks in time to save himself from
pitching overboard, steadied himself for a moment and then crawled aft.
Leary, profiting by the skipper's experience in the scuppers, made a
line fast to the butt of the foremast, clawed his way up the slant of
the deck to port, scrambled aft until he was fairly in line with the
stump of the mainmast, and then let himself slide until checked in his
course by that battered section of spar. Taking a turn around it with
his line, he again clawed to port, and scrambled aft again. His second
slide to starboard brought him to the splintered companionway of the
main cabin. Here he removed the end of the rope from his waist and made
it fast, thus rigging a life-line from the butt of the foremast aft to
the cabin for the use of those to follow. It had been a swift and
considerate piece of work. The men on the cliff cheered. Nick waved his
hand to the cliff, shouted a caution to the man at that moment
descending the foremast, and then swung himself down into four feet of
water and the outer cabin.

"Where be ye, skipper?" he bawled.

"This way, Nick. Fair aft," replied the skipper. "Keep to port or ye'll
have to swim. I bes in the captain's berth; an' here bes his dispatch
box, high an' dry in his bunk."

Nick made his way aft, through the length of the outer cabin as quickly
as he could, with the water to his chin as he stooped forward in his
efforts toward speed, entered an inner and smaller cabin by a narrow
door and finally swam into the captain's own state-room. He grasped the
edge of the berth in which the skipper crouched.

"Hell! I bes nigh perished entirely wid the cold, skipper!" he cried.

"Then swallow this," said the skipper, leaning down and tilting a bottle
of brandy to the other's lips. "I found it right here in the bunk,
half-empty; aye, an' two more like it, but wid nary a drop in 'em.
There, Nick, that bes enough for ye."

Leary dragged himself up beside the skipper. As the deadlight had been
closed over the port, the state-room was illumined only by a gray
half-gloom from the cabin.

"This bunk bes nigh full o' junk," said Nolan. "The skipper o' this ship
must ha' slept in the lower bunk an' kept his stores here. Here bes
t'ree