d before it, and so form
its own barrier to clear water. And after this there were kind wishes and
hopes that we had spent a good night, the which I took to be prompted by
the feminine heart of the writer, and after that I fell to wondering
whether it was the captain's wife who acted as scribe. Then I was waked
from my pondering, by one of the men crying out that they in the ship had
commenced to heave again upon the big rope, and, for a time, I stood and
watched it rise slowly, as it came to tautness.

I had stood there awhile, watching the rope, when, suddenly, there came a
commotion amid the weed, about two-thirds of the way to the ship, and now
I saw that the rope had freed itself from the weed, and clutching it,
were, maybe, a score of giant crabs. At this sight, some of the men cried
out their astonishment, and then we saw that there had come a number of
men into the look-out place in the top of the superstructure, and,
immediately, they opened a very brisk fire upon the creatures, and so, by
ones and twos they fell back into the weed, and after that, the men in
the hulk resumed their heaving, and so, in a while, had the rope some
feet clear of the surface.

Now, having tautened the rope so much as they thought proper, they left
it to have its due effect upon the ship, and proceeded to attach a great
block to it; then they signaled to us to slack away on the little rope
until they had the middle part of it, and this they hitched around the
neck of the block, and to the eye in the strop of the block they attached
a bo'sun's chair, and so they had ready a carrier, and by this means we
were able to haul stuff to and from the hulk without having to drag it
across the surface of the weed; being, indeed, the fashion in which we
had intended to haul ashore the people in the ship. But now we had the
bigger project of salvaging the ship herself, and, further, the big rope,
which acted as support for the carrier, was not yet of a sufficient
height above the weed-continent for it to be safe to attempt to bring any
ashore by such means; and now that we had hopes of saving the ship, we
did not intend to risk parting the big rope, by trying to attain such a
degree of tautness as would have been necessary at this time to have
raised its bight to the desired height.

Now, presently, the bo'sun called out to one of the men to make
breakfast, and when it was ready we came to it, leaving the man with the
wounded arm to keep watch;