Another
hiss, as of concentrated hatred, and the second rocket was shooting its
parabola through the dusky air. Roxton raised his telescope to his eye the
same moment.
"Over her starn!" he cried. "There's a fellow getting down from the
cat-head to run aft.--Stop, stop!" he shouted involuntarily. "There's an
awful wave on your quarter."
His voice was swallowed in the roaring of the storm. I fancied I could
distinguish a dark something shoot from the bows towards the stern. But the
huge wave fell upon the wreck. The same moment Roxton exclaimed--so coolly
as to amaze me, forgetting how men must come to regard familiar things
without discomposure--
"He's gone! I said so. The next'll have better luck, I hope."
That man came ashore alive, though.
All were forward of the foremast. The bowsprit, when I looked through
Roxton's telescope, was shapeless as with a swarm of bees. Now and then a
single shriek rose upon the wild air. But now my attention was fixed on the
life-boat. She had got into the wildest of the broken water; at one
moment she was down in a huge cleft, the next balanced like a beam on the
knife-edge of a wave, tossed about hither and thither, as if the waves
delighted in mocking the rudder; but hitherto she had shipped no water.
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