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She is sinking by the head!" And with much ado some were dragged back, some leaped back all but old Michael Heard. With hair and beard floating in the wind, the bronzed naked figure, like some weird old Indian fakir, still climbed on steadfastly up the mizzen-chains of the Spaniard, hatchet in hand. "Come back, Michael! Leap while you may!" shouted a dozen voices. Michael turned
"What hope was there that such a nutshell should save them all?" they thought, perchance, on seeing it approach. They little knew the wonderful vitality of a lifeboat! Just as it passed under the quarter, a sea swept it right up into the mizzen-chains. The utmost efforts of the crew to fend off were unavailing.
"There, sir, below the mizzen-chains." "Then there is nothing more to keep us aboard lads. Stow yourselves away and hang on; I'll wait here until you are all over." They faded away into the mist, dim spectral figures, and I remained alone, listening anxiously for some hostile sound from below. Had I chosen the right course?
He struck out bravely alongside the ship. "Heave us a rope, shipmates," he sung out. I ran to the side, and was just in time to throw him a rope as he dropped past. He caught hold of it, and hand over hand he hauled himself on board into the mizzen-chains.
An instant later the two ships scraped together, and the starboard bower anchor of the Gloire caught the mizzen-chains of the Leda upon the port side. With a yell the black swarm of boarders steadied themselves for a spring. But their feet were never to reach that blood-stained deck. From some where there came a well-aimed whiff of grape, and another, and another.
"Row beneath that window," cried the doctor, and the boat was not rowed but dragged slowly there by Bob Hampton, who kept hooking on by the main and mizzen-chains. "Keep off!" roared Jarette fiercely. "Do you hear? Keep off, or I fire." But Bob Hampton paid no heed to his orders till the boat was beneath one of the round cabin-windows, and then he thrust the boat about six feet from the ship.
He grew less brusque with her, and showed on occasions a sort of diffident gentleness, and then Lucy was satisfied that her work was progressing. 'You never talk of your life there in England, she said one night as they stood by the mizzen-chains overlooking the sea.
By this time a swarm of brave Frenchmen was gathered in the mizzen-chains and gangways of their ship, waiting for a lift of the sea to launch them into the English outworks. And scarcely a dozen Englishmen were alive within hail to encounter them. Not even an officer, till Robin Lyth returned, was there to take command of them.
The next wave carried them back, and enabled Bax to seize the child and lay it in a place of safety. The mother was soon beside it, and in a short time the boat was quite filled. Bax then leaped into the mizzen-chains, the lifeboat pushed off, and conveyed her cargo to the steam-tug. They took off 25 women and children the first trip.
Down glided the cutter into the water as the hands inboard eased off the falls; and, her crew having dropped their oars, the next minute she was pulling out towards the boat, which was now only some twenty yards or so off the ship, abreast of our mizzen-chains. Of course, we could see from the ship all that went on as the cutter sheered up to the derelict craft.
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