Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/245

  rode more buoyantly, on a more even keel, and the next crest passed beneath her.

Encouraged by this, Varge began to edge his way forward toward the wreckage of the foremast—making quick dashes as the schooner topped a wave and began to slide down into the black, yawning valley; crouching and bracing himself as she mounted upward, nearing the next on-coming crest.

He reached the forecastle and once more began to ply his knife. The foremast, like a broken limb sagging from a tree, stretched outboard over the schooner's side, but the end, held by a tangle of sail and rigging, pounding and thrashing, was making havoc of rail and deck.

In the utter darkness Varge worked on by the sense of touch, cutting, hewing, hacking—at times thrown upon his face to gasp and choke as a swirl of water passed over him; at times working with more speed and success as the lightning glare lit up the heavens, the wild, turbulent waste of sea and his immediate surroundings.

It went at last, the mast, carrying with it a section of the rail—smashed once, twice, once more against the schooner's hull with crunching, wicked blows—then swept away on the top of a wave and cleared the stern. Varge gathered up some pieces of rope and made his way aft again to the lee of the "house." Jonah Sully still lay there, but now he moved feebly and moaned as Varge bent over him. Varge lifted the skipper into a sitting posture, passed the lashings more securely around the other's body, fastened them about himself as well, and sat down upon the deck, his back to the house."

He bent his head suddenly close to the other's