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Updated: May 6, 2025
Six parts of a hawser were bent to the kedges, three to each, and these parts were held at equal distances by pieces of spars ingeniously placed between them, the whole being kept in its place by regular stretchers that were lashed along the hawsers at distances of ten feet, giving all the parts of the ropes the same level.
Then the rescuers on shore tied a thick cable or hawser to their double line and ran it out to the wreck, but when this thick rope reached the crew, they did not seem to know what to do with it, for it was not hauled upon, but continued to hang loose. "They must be foreigners, and don't know what to do next," said one. "P'rhaps they've got too cold to work it," said another.
The second lieutenant one of the few officers unwounded volunteered to work his way along the hawser, and a midshipman and several of the men offered to accompany him; Ronald begged leave to go also. In those days, strange as it may seem, many seamen could not swim. The boarding-party commenced their somewhat hazardous passage from one ship to the other.
Now every effort was made to get her astern, an anchor taken out, a rope brought to a winch I had for the cable, and the engines backed; but all in vain. A small Turkish Government steamer, which is to be our consort, came to our assistance, but of course very slowly, and much time was occupied before we could get a hawser to her.
This object was a small buoy, similar to that which had floated on the bosom of the Neuse when the Ebba lay off Healthful House. The buoy, with a towline affixed to it, was lifted into the boat that was then paddled to the bow of the Ella, from the deck of which another hawser was cast to the captain, who made it fast to the towline of the buoy.
But the salvagee, by this method, was always left at the buoy, and was, of course, more liable to chafe and wear than a hawser passed through the ring, which could be wattled with canvas, and shifted at pleasure.
He dragged out one of perhaps ten or twelve feet in length and four or five inches in diameter, handling it as he would the same length of hawser. He hung it over the limb of a tree so that I could have a good chance for a picture of it. The thing squirmed slowly to the ground and crawled sluggishly away to the place from which it had been taken.
Presently, Dan Hicks, true to his promise to abandon the prize to Jack Flaherty, turned his megaphone beachward and shouted: "Yankee Prince, ahoy! Cast off my hawser. The other tug will put a line aboard you." But Mr. Gibney was now master of the situation. He had a good hemp hawser stretching between him and salvation and until he should be hauled off he had no intention of slipping that cable.
At this moment the men, one and all, still grasping their respective slew-ropes firmly in their hands, and without bending a joint in their whole bodies, fell simultaneously on their backs, flat on the water! The effect of this sudden movement was to turn the cylinder a full quadrant, or one quarter of a revolution. This, of course, brought a considerable strain on the hawser fixed to the anchor.
Mildmay hove the line with all a seaman's skill, and a couple of bights settled down round the neck and shoulders of the expectant tar. "Haul in, and throw the eye of the hawser over your windlass bitts," ordered Mildmay; "we will soon have you clear of your present pickle."
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