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If Lister's calculations were accurate, the pump had thrown out enough water, and the buoyancy of the other craft would lift the wreck's stern. If not but he refused to think about this. The sea breeze had dropped and the smoke of the engine went straight up. There was not a line on the glittering lagoon. The sea looked like melted silver; one felt it give out light and heat.
The sailor's upturned face was of a sickly yellow, smeared with blood and crusted with salt. The same white crust filled the hollows of his closed eyes, and streaked his beard and hair. It turned her faint for the moment. "An the wreck's scat abroad," continued Old Zeb; an' the interpretation thereof is barrels an' nuts.
"Did the boat fall on me?" asked the Captain, carefully. His voice seemed thin to himself. "Not on you, sir," replied the steward. "Not so to speak, on top of you. The keel 'it you on the shoulder, sir, an' you contracted a thump on the 'ead." "And the wreck?" asked the Captain. "The wreck's crew is aboard, sir; barque Vavasour, of London, sir. The mate brought 'em off most gallantly, sir.
Then it stopped, the hulk shook, and the wreck's long side slowly got upright. "She's off!" said Brown hoarsely. Somebody blew the tug's whistle, and one or two shouted, but this was all. They had won a very stubborn fight, but winning had cost them much, and Lister felt their triumph was strangely flat. He smiled and owned he would be satisfied to lie down and sleep.
He came listlessly into the room, and I was pained to observe that a night's rest had effected no improvement in the unhappy wreck's appearance. Indeed, I should have said, if anything, that he was looking rather more moth-eaten than when I had seen him last.
And Stevey Todd says: "A wreck's a wreck. That river ain't three foot deep. How'd they float her out of this? You say, for I ain't made up my mind," he says, which I didn't tell him, not knowing how they'd do it. For a few days Stevey Todd and I lived high on ship's stores, loafing and looking down the valley at the damaged city. All the river front was wrecked.
The fierce sun had not burned but bleached their skin; their blood was poisoned by the miasma the land breeze blew off at night. For all that, Cartwright's promise was they should share his reward and somehow they held on. At length, in the scorching heat one afternoon when the flood tide began to run, they hauled the hulk and tug abaft the wreck's engine-room and made the great ropes fast.
Well, she would soon know and she shrank. She rubbed the glasses and looked again. There were two towropes; Terrier plunged across the rollers on Arcturus' starboard bow, the Spanish tug to port. It looked as if the wreck's steering-gear did not work. Spray blew about the boats and the crested seas broke in foaming turmoil against the towed vessel's side until she drew in behind the Isleta.
So, also, had she gone under the wreck's stern to leeward, the same tide would have swept her out of reach, to say nothing of the danger of falling masts. It was impossible to have approached her to windward, as one crash against the vessel's broadside in such a storm and sea would have perhaps cost the lives of all the crew.
Then, from behind him rose the starved baying of his brothers. Sheila looked up. They were bounding toward her, all wolf these but more dangerous after their taste of human blood than wolves to the bristling hair along their backs and the bared fangs. Again she fired. This time she struck Wreck's paw. He lifted it and howled. She fired again.
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