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Updated: May 18, 2025
At daylight, as the collier steamed ahead and tautened our tow-line, we could see the parties of searchers with torches scouring the beach.
"He was turned loose on the door to take up your attention, while we did the tie-behind trick." A rope ladder having been lowered, Commander Ennerling, by nimble use of the tow-line, had succeeded in reaching it, and he now came over the rail, chuckling. "It's on the 'Massapequa, I admit," grinned Braylesford. "On me, I'm afraid," pronounced the watch lieutenant, with a half-groan.
At the first trial the machine rose easily, but the tow-line snapped when it was well clear of the ground, and the glider descended, weighed down through being sodden with rain.
The trio hastened to the after part of the deck, and, raising a trap-door which the professor indicated, withdrew therefrom a thin pliant wire hawser made, like almost everything else in the ship, of aethereum which, having secured one end of it to a ring-bolt in the after extremity of the deck, they coiled down in readiness for use as a tow-line.
Big freight sampans float past, propelled by oars if going down-stream, and by the combined efforts of tow-line and poles if against the current. The propelling poles are fitted with neatly carved "crutch-trees" to fit the shoulder; the polers, sometimes numbering as many as a dozen, walk back and forth along side-planks and encourage themselves with cries of "ha-i, ha-i, ha-i."
The Will-o'-the Wisp was still in view, but seemed to be struggling. Nearing her again they found she was crippled in some way. The Captain of the Fairy Queen spoke her and inquired her trouble, when he found one of her shafts was broken. The arrangement was being made to get her tow-line and aid her on her way.
There was not even the impression of distance; the swells arose as though at their elbows, tossed them with great, slimy ease, let them down again, plucked them this way and that, while the humming tow-line ran out to the vague, phantom, reeling tug ahead. There was a suspicion of snow in the veiled sky, and the wind stabbed like a knife.
At this moment the tow-line slipped from the thwart of the boat, and we shot away, as it seemed to me, a hundred feet, on the send of the very next sea. There was not time for the Americans to get seated at their oars again, before the other cutter grappled.
We carried two boats on the davits, but as they were too light to be of much service, we hoisted out the long-boat, which was stowed amidships. We also lowered one of the gigs. The two boats were at once made fast to the tow-line. The men gave way, and the schooner's head was kept off from the threatening reef, against which the sea was breaking with tremendous force.
When said comforts of home were laden into the canoe, there remained forward and aft just about one square foot of space for Billy and me, and not over two inches of freeboard for the River. We could not stand up and pole; tracking with a tow-line was out of the question, because there existed no banks on which to walk; the current was too swift for paddling. So we knelt and poled.
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