men were to be
rescued--for it was perfectly evident to everybody that the barque could
not possibly float much longer--so, shrewdly guessing at the source of
the inaction, I requested Murgatroyd to haul the chair aboard; and, this
being done, I seated myself in it and requested them to haul me across
to the barque. Twice was I caught by the sea during this journey, and
each time it seemed that I emerged at the precise moment when, it would
have been impossible to resist the drag for even another second; but I
reached the barque safely and, at once scrambling out of the chair,
proceeded to despatch the Frenchmen in rotation: the task proving less
difficult than I had expected, my voluntary journey to them seeming to
have inspired them with fresh courage.

At length, by dint of lashing the weaker men into the chair, and
earnestly cautioning the strong ones to hold on with all their might, I
succeeded in securing the passage of the entire remainder of the
Frenchmen to the _City of Cawnpore_; and then came the task of effecting
my own retreat. Of course this could have been accomplished by means of
the hawser and the bosun's chair; but this would have involved the loss
of the hawser and all the hauling-gear attached--which it would have
been necessary to cut away. I thought it a pity to inflict this loss
upon the ship, merely to save myself the discomfort of being hauled
through the water from one ship to the other, so as soon as the last
Frenchman was safely aboard the _City of Cawnpore_ I proceeded to cut
and cast adrift the hawser from the barque's mizenmast, and a few
minutes later the massive rope's-end flew overboard, quickly followed by
the heaving-line, in the end of which I had knotted a bowline for my own
accommodation. I had just thrown this bowline over my shoulder, and was
watching the coils of the line go leaping overboard, one after the
other, as the rescuing ship went drifting rapidly to leeward, when a
perfect mountain of a sea came roaring down upon the wreck, sweeping
unbroken in over her bows and right aft until it reached the front of
the poop, against which it broke with terrific violence, smashing in the
entire front of the structure, as I judged by the tremendous crashing of
timber that instantly followed. Checked for the fraction of an instant
by its impact with the poop, the sea piled itself up in a sort of wall,
and then came surging and foaming along the deck toward me. I saw that
it would