Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/244

 evident enough that the schooner was lost. With every lift and motion the wreckage forward thrashed and flogged at deck and hull; while, without helm and the headsails gone, she slewed sickeningly around and fell off into the trough of the sea.

He called to Jonah Sully, shouting in the man's ear—there was no answer. Then quickly he laid the skipper down in the shelter of the "house," passed the end of a piece of tackle that was trailing from the cabin roof beneath the other's armpits, and made it fast. There was a sheath-knife in Jonah's belt—Varge snatched it and clawed his way forward.

The Mary K. Jones, broadside on, the mainsail drawing, was listing at an angle that threatened every instant to roll her bottom side up. A crest broke, curled, bubbled, foamed, rose to Varge's waist when he was half-way across the deck—and shot him back. His feet brought up against the lee rail and, flung flat on his face, the water surged over him. He got to his knees, and this time crawled across the deck, reached the main-sheet and began to hack at it with his knife.

The schooner rose from the trough, up, up, toward another crest—up, up, almost to the top—then it broke with a roar. The deck canted under him at right angles, but this time, though his feet were taken from under him, he had the main-sheet to cling to and he had made good his hold. He rose, the water streaming from him, and hacked and cut at the tough hemp again.

Suddenly it parted with a report like a pistol shot, and like a monster flail the boom swung far out over the lee rail and brought up with a terrific thud against the stays—but instantly the schooner seemed to feel the