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I saw him take out the oars, but I knew they'd do no good in such a chop, even if they didn't break; and pretty soon he found it so, for he drew them in and began to untie the anchor-rope and wind it round his waist. I sprang to him. "What are you doing, Dan?" I exclaimed. "I can swim, at least," he answered. "And tow us? a mile? You know you can't! It's madness!" "I must try.
But from this misfortune the ship was preserved by its patron saint, and by the anchor-rope, which, wound up by the paddle-wheel, got shorter and shorter, and drew the wreck nearer the island and further from the vessel. "Oh, the poor pretty white cat!"
The nights had proved that they could not climb the lugger's side, and when he was in her the canoe was laid athwart her gunwales; but at night he had to drop the bit of old iron that served for an anchor, and the very first night a large moccasin not of the dusky kind described in books, but of that yet deadlier black sort, an ell in length, which the swampers call the Congo came up the anchor-rope.
Gregory turned about to see the black waters to the sternward were rippled with sparkling threads of silver-white. From out the darkness came a swiftly moving gray shadow. One glance astern caused Bronson to slash the anchor-rope which held the Richard. Then he started the auxiliary motor and threw the speed-craft forward with a jerk.
We were challenged the moment we came within stone or arrow shot, and bidden to halt and recite our business; but he was civil enough when he heard we were those whom he expected. He called a crew and slacked out his anchor-rope till his ship ground against the shingle, and then thrust out his two steering oars to help us clamber aboard. I turned to Ylga with words of thanks and farewell.
Slipping over the side Gahan descended by the trailing anchor-rope until his feet touched the top of the wall, where he had no difficulty in arresting the slow drifting of the ship. Then he drew up the anchor and lowered it inside the enclosure. Still there was no movement upon the part of the sleepers beneath they lay as dead men.
His eyes, sweeping up from the path, saw fringed and beaded buckskin, a stalwart form, a bronzed and bearded face, and keen, gray eyes warm with the light of gladness. He was gripped in hands of iron. "Son! hyar you air an' it's the savin' of me!" exclaimed a deep, familiar voice. "Slingerland!" cried Neale, and he grasped his old friend as a drowning man at an anchor-rope. "My God!
When Timar arrived within a cast of the mill, he took a coil of the anchor-rope in his right hand; a hook was fastened to its end. The rudderless mass came quickly nearer, like some drifting antediluvian monster blind chance guided it; its paddle-wheel turned swiftly with the motion of the water, and under the empty out-shoot the mill-stone revolved over the flour-bin as if it was working hard.
They cut her hawser free, and with the big anchor-rope kinking through the hawse-hole, away went the Aurora, picking up, as she went, the chain-anchor with its eight or ten fathoms of chain still out and tucking it under her bilge; and there that anchor stayed, jammed hard against her bottom planking, while she rushed across the harbor.
He shortened the anchor-rope, and tried the hold of the anchor on the bottom to make sure the lugger might not swing into the willows, for in every fork of every bough was a huge dark mass of serpents plaited and piled one upon another, and ready at any moment to glide apart towards any new shelter that might be reached.
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