ar, while the way to them and
safety lay only a few fathoms distant--torturing him by its very
nearness. For every now and then driving hard to the end of her tether
she would rush forward on a sea and appear to be coming within his
reach, only to mock him by drifting away once more, like some
relentless lady-love playing with his very heartstrings. The rope
under the sunken mainsail prevented her from quite reaching him, and
each time that she seemed coming to his arms, she again darted beyond
his grasp.

Whatever could be done must be done at once. Even now he realized
that the cold and wet were robbing him of his store of strength. Could
he possibly get out to where the boat was? There might be one way, but
there could be only one, and even that appeared a desperate and
utterly futile venture. It was to find a footing somehow, to let go
his vise-like grip of the rail, and leap out into the darkness across
the black and fathomless gulf of water surging up between the hull and
the vessel's main boom in the hope of landing in the belly of the
sail; to be able to keep his balance and walk out breast high through
the rushing water into the blackness beyond till he should reach the
gaff; and so, clinging there, perchance catch the boat's painter as
she ran in on a rebounding sea. There would be nothing to hold on to.
The ever swirling water would upset a man walking in daylight on a
level quayside. He would have nothing but a sunken, bellying piece of
canvas to support him--a piece only, for the little leach rope leading
from the clew to the peak marked a sharp edge which would spell the
dividing line between life and death.

He had known men of courage; he had read of what Englishmen had done.
But he had never suspected that in his own English blood could lie
dormant that which makes heroes at all times. A hastily breathed
prayer--his mind made up, letting go of the weather rail he commenced
to lower himself to the wheel, hoping to get a footing there for the
momentous spring that would in all probability land him in eternity.
But even as he climbed a little farther aft to reach down to it, he
found himself actually straddling the bodies of the missing mate and
boy, who were cowering under the rail, supported by their feet against
the steering-gear boxing.

Like a thunderclap the whole cause of the disaster burst upon his
mind. The mate's feet planked against the spokes of the wheel
suggested it. The helm was not hard