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Updated: May 29, 2025
"All the second cutters aft!" shouted the third officer from the window; and the crew of this boat rushed up the ladder to the promenade deck, and followed the life-line to the davits of the cutter. "Bargate, who pulls the stroke oar in the second cutter, has the rheumatism in his right arm, and is not fit to go in the boat," interposed Mr. Gaskette, the second officer.
Slowly he heaves and pushes, now at this, now at the life-line hitching on knob, handle, lever or projecting peg on anything or nothing in that maze of machinery; by involution and evolution, like the unknown quantity in a cubic equation, through all the twists, turns, assumptions and substitutions, and always with that unmanageable, indivisible coefficient the box, until he reaches the upper air.
He saw me pushing along the life-line, plucked up heart, and went with myself through a sousing sea to the door. I caught a glimpse of a white face glaring at me from the interior: in a second a figure shot out, fled with incredible speed toward the bow, and leaped into the sea just where our boat lay. "They'll pick him up," I exclaimed.
"Three or four days," murmured Joe. "And in the meanwhile " He did not care to finish the sentence. Again came a quick signal on the life-line. "He wants more air!" cried the man who interpreted the jerks. "Give him more air, boys!" The men at the wheel of the air pump worked it faster. Though why an increased pressure was wanted no one knew.
Speed, nimbleness, strength and activity were worthless: with tedious fingers he must follow the life-line, find its entanglements and slowly loosen them, carefully taking up the slack, and so follow the straightened cord to the door. Then the chest: he must not forget that.
The chance of happiness had come with dazzling unexpectedness, and she was like a drowning man, who forgets all else but, the life-line thrown to him. On she ran, like a little brown leaf driven by the wind and rain, her head bent, her shawl clutched closely around her precious bundle.
Waitstill, how you have helped my poor, dear mother! Would that I were free to tell you how I value your friendship! It is something more than mere friendship! What you are doing is like throwing a life-line to a sinking human being. Two or three times, of late, mother has forgotten to set out the supper things for my father.
Down, down, down went the young diver a veritable "boy fish" now if ever there was such a thing. Joe had a glimpse of the air hose, like some long, thin water snake, beside him. It went down into the depths, as did the life-line and the thicker hoisting rope. "And where they end there's the diver," reasoned Joe. He used the air hose as a guide and swam as near to it as he could.
The long-suffering bleakness was very pronounced on Nancy's face, and when the walls of water, in impending downfall, reared above the Elsinore's rail, he was always the first to leap for the life-line which had been stretched fore and aft across the wide space of deck.
While Edgar gazed at the slumberer, around whose form a number of small fish were prying inquiringly, he observed that his life-line received a jerk, and came to the correct conclusion that the attendants above, alarmed at the absence of motion in the diver's life-line and air-pipe, had signalled to know if all was right.
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