rampton, the engineer, was at the wheel, while
Whitey Welch stood by the engines. As the lifeboat was straining on
the top of a swell, Mulhatton attempted to leap in, but was viciously
punched back by Dan, who then sprang out five feet and sprawled in the
stern sheets.

"Damn!" cried the disappointed mate as he sprang to Noonan's side and
seized the line, which was already paying out.

Into the riot went Dan. There was neither mercy nor tolerance in the
waters,--the waves ripped all about in wanton fury; the spume cloaked
the face of them in wet clouds and the sea hollows lay like black pits.
But merciless and intolerant as were the waters, Dan asked no odds of
them. Crouching in the stern with one oar dug deep, he was hurled on
his errand of mercy. The _Sovereign_ whistled its commendation, while
ashore the spectators and life-savers stood breathless. A stealthy
wave slashed the oar, almost pulling his shoulder from its socket, but
he kept the oar. Aye, he kept it and cursed the wave that sought to
take it away. On, on, as determined, as indomitable as the elements.
A wave cut the boat full. It skidded on its side and righted. A
comber rose green behind, hiding the _Fledgling_. It caught the
lifeboat before it broke. It hoisted it high and then, passing on,
expended its crushing force against the wreck ahead. And Dan laughed,
and the spindrift flying like buckshot beat against his teeth. On, on,
until the wreck, boiling in water, loomed ahead. On past the stern of
the wreck shot the small boat, until it was just under the lee of it.
There he signalled to his men to pay out the line no more.

"Jump!" he called to the three men in the rigging. First jumped Daniel
James, and Dan caught him out of the waters and hauled him in. And he
caught the next, the boat careening, shipping a rush of water. As
Captain Ephraim crouched for the leap, the sough of the rotten hull,
working and heaving like the carcass of a shark, was bursting out in a
score of places and the lumber deck-load rose and fell and quivered and
flailed huge planks into the waves. The end was near. Dan shouted the
skipper to hurry. Ephraim obeyed, and had fought his way through the
caldron to the boat and was dragged aboard, when suddenly, with a great
straining sigh, the hull of the wreck parted amidships, both ends
sinking in the waters. A comber rushed in between, swelling and
hissing. The lumber deck-load rose in the air like a living