Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/243

 starboard rail like an eggshell, grinding it to pieces as it fell, the foremast went by the board—and forward was a smother of whipping headsails and wrecked gear.

It had seemed an age since the wave had swept them, but it could not have been much more than a minute, two at the most. Suddenly, he was jerked entirely free of the water as the schooner plunged again head down—and he realised for the first time that he had been swept completely over the stern rail and was still clinging to it, his body hanging down against the vessel's hull.

The plunge that lifted him freed the stern deck temporarily of water. He pulled himself up, clambered over the rail, and his feet, staggering upon the deck, touched something soft and yielding. He stooped and felt it—it was a limp, inert, oilskinned form. He lifted the man in his arms.

A flash of lightning played luridly across the sky. Varge glanced quickly toward the wheel—there was no wheel. Then his eyes, full of startled agony, swept about him—and rested on the face against his shoulder. The Frenchman, the Swede, the negro, the Gloucester man were gone—and only the senseless form of Jonah Sully remained.

An instant Varge stood there motionless—and in that instant, as though Nature herself were stunned and appalled at the ghastly tragedy she had enacted, there came a momentary lull, and the hush was as a solemn benediction for the dead.

But an instant, too, it lasted—and then upon the doomed craft the storm broke again with redoubled fury.

And now, even to Varge's inexperienced eye, it was