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I pumped till I could pump no longer, and then, after a short rest, we commenced in earnest. We first lashed a short spar, with a tackle secured to its head, to the stump of the foremast, and then, having fitted two shrouds on a side, with a forestay and backstays, and blocks for the halliards, to the spar we had chosen for a foremast, we swayed it up my means of the short spar and tackle.
And while the dripping rope crawled in through the fair-lead, cracking and twanging to the strain of the ship's arrested drift, he stood at the rail, rifle in hand, and muttered: "He's a comic-opera sailor, all right; but Lordy! what a man he'll make with his feet on dry earth! Let go my anchor, hey? By Godfrey, he can let go the forestay when we're going about, and I'll forgive him after this."
The forestay parted, and then with a crash and rending of broken timber the mast went some six feet from the deck, falling aft and to port, and taking with it half the length of the gunwale from amidships. After that crash we stood and looked at one another, each fearing that there must be some hurt. But there was none.
In a sudden rage I gripped the forestay with my left hand, lowered my right, and, slipping my fingers under his belt, lifted him he was a light man swung him outboard and overboard, and dropped him into the sea. I heard the splash; with an ugly thud, which told me that some part of him had struck the boat's gunwale.
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