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Sharpe and Dodd met, and holding on by the life-lines, applied their speaking trumpets tight to each other's ears; and even then they had to bawl. "She can't carry a rag much longer." "No, sir; not half an hour." "Can we furl that main taupsle?" Sharpe shook his head. "The first moment we start a sheet, the sail will whip the mast out of her." "You are right Well, then, I'll cut it away."
The skipper was the first to venture a passage from the edge of the cliff to the foremast. He made it with several life-lines around his waist. He reached the bundle lashed to the cross-trees and, clinging with hands and feet, looked into the face of an unconscious but living woman. So he hung for a long half-minute, staring.
The boat was, however, one of those self-righting crafts, which had just at that time been introduced. She immediately righted, emptied herself, and the crew climbed into her by means of the life-lines festooned round her sides; but the brave coxswain was jammed under her by some wreck, and nearly lost his life having to dive three or four times before he could extricate himself.
The course was all right, though the ship yawed a good deal in the trough of the sea, the gale pelting her squarely on the beam. Though it was not an easy thing even for a thorough seaman to preserve his centre of gravity, the young officer made his way fore and aft with the aid of the life-lines which had been extended the evening before.
The crew, meanwhile, having on cork belts, floated, regained the boat, clambered into it by means of the life-lines hung round her sides, cut the cable, and returned to shore in safety. So much for the nature and capabilities of our lifeboats.
The essence of loyalty of man to man is made of love-capacity and understanding and these are qualities that come from evolution of the soul just as every other fine thing comes. We perceive the old farmer on his door-step in the evening love and life-lines of labour upon him; we enjoy his haleness and laughter.... But that is the mask.
They sat on the deck in ghastly, drooping rows, and at the end the carpenter, with two hands to help him, moved busily from place to place, setting taut and hitching the life-lines. The boatswain, with one leg and one arm embracing a stanchion, struggled with a lamp pressed to his breast, trying to get a light, and growling all the time like an industrious gorilla.
Swaying drunkenly from side to side, then tossing up and down, turning in unison with those fiercely whirling clouds, the aeromotor seemed at the point of wreck and ruin. Desperately the trio clung to the life-lines, clenching teeth upon the life-giving tubes as that terrible pressure increased so much that it seemed impossible for the human frame to longer resist.
All had been ready for some minutes; every preparation made according to the time-honoured use of these coasts: four men with life-lines round them standing knee-deep waiting to dash in deeper, others behind them grouped in two files, some holding the slack of the life-lines, forming a double rank from the shore to the fire, giving the steersman his course.
"Pay out the air-pipe and life-lines and give me free play." This being done he could pass under the lines of the other divers, and examined the wreck as far as the bow, where he found an immense hole, partially filled by a mass of the rock which had originally driven it in. This of itself was sufficient to have sunk the vessel.
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