d have been a physical
impossibility in the first instance.

Once there was a check. They waited anxiously, but there was no sign
given by the frail rope that they were to haul in again. Then the
upward movement continued.

"Chunk o' rock in the way," announced Coke, glaring round at the
survivors as if to challenge contradiction. No one answered. These
men were beginning to measure their lives against the life of the wedge
of iron and timber kept in position by the crumbling frame of the ship.
It was a fast-diminishing scale. The figures painted on the
_Andromeda's_ bows represented minutes rather than feet.

Watts was lying crouched on deck, with his arms thrown round the
windlass. Looking ever for a fresh incursion of rats, he seemed to be
cheered by the fact that his dreaded assailants preferred the interior
of the forecastle to the wave-swept deck. He was the only man there
who had no fear of death. Suddenly he began to croon a long-forgotten
sailor's chanty. Perhaps, in some dim way, a notion of his true
predicament had dawned on him, for there was a sinister purport to the
verse.

"Now, me lads, sing a stave of the Dead Man's Mass;
Ye'll never sail 'ome again, O.
We're twelve old salts an' the skipper's lass,
Marooned in the Spanish Main, O.
Sing hay----
Sing ho----
A nikker is Davy Jones,
Just one more plug, an' a swig at the jug,
An' up with the skull an' bones."

After a longer and faster haul than had been noticed previously, the
rope stopped a second time. Everyone, except Watts, was watching the
whip intently. His eyes peered around, wide-open, lusterless. The
pounding of the seas, the grating of iron on rock, left him unmoved.

"Wy don't you jine in the chorus, you swabs?" he cried, and forthwith
plunged into the second stanza.

"The _Alice_ brig sailed out of the Pool
For the other side of the world, O,
An' our ole man brought 'is gal from school,
With 'er 'air so brown an' curled, O.
Sing hum----
Sing hum----
Of death no man's a dodger,
An' we squared our rig for a yardarm jig
When we sighted the Jolly Roger."

He grew quite uproarious because the lilting tune evoked neither
applause nor vocal efforts from the others.

"Lord luv' a duck!" he shouted. "Can't any of ye lend a hand? Cheer
O, maties--'ere's a bit more----

The brig was becalmed in a s