ning toward the exact spot where the nine men
were still huddled together in the main rigging, anxiously watching our
approach and wondering what we were about to do. They saw that San
Domingo was preparing to heave them a rope's-end; but that did not very
greatly enlighten them until Joe and Sir Edgar each raised a life-buoy
to the rail, and prepared to throw it overboard. Then they got an
inkling of our intent; and a feeble shout went up from among them.

Slowly, and more slowly still, the barque continued to forge ahead; and
I began to fear that, in my anxiety to avoid an actual collision with
the wreck, I had backed my topsail a second or two too soon, and that we
should not, after all, get near enough to her to accomplish the rescue.
Still, we had not wholly lost our way; and foot by foot--or rather, inch
by inch--we continued to creep nearer and nearer to the wreck, until the
negro, on the end of his spar, was soaring and swooping wildly within
some fifty feet of the group of half-drowned men; and then our way
stopped. This was the moment that San Domingo had been waiting for.
Watching his opportunity, he seized upon the instant when the wreck and
ourselves were both sunk in the trough of a sea, and therefore
comparatively sheltered from the wind, when, with a single powerful
swing of the coil round his head, he sent it whizzing straight and fair
in among the group who were anxiously waiting for it.

"Get as far aft as you can, and then haul away upon the line!" I
shouted.

One of them waved his hand to signify that he understood what I wanted;
and then they all took hold of the line, and, with it grasped firmly in
their hands, made their way cautiously in toward the hull, we watching
their movements, meanwhile, in a state of the most intense anxiety and
suspense. For now that we were within a biscuit-toss of them the
appalling precariousness and peril of their situation became fully
apparent to us; more completely so, indeed, than it probably was to the
unfortunate fellows themselves. For, huddled together as they were in
the rigging, they were sheltered to some extent by the hull of the brig,
and were thus unable to clearly see and measure the stupendous
proportions of the vast roaring mountains of foam-capped water that came
hissing and swooping down upon them from to windward, each huge comber
seemingly sentient with a full determination to overwhelm and engulf the
already stricken and helpless fabric