Page:Moving Picture Boys on the Coast.djvu/207

Rh swelled into bunches of muscles that had been trained in the hard school of the sea.

"Will the haul-rope stand it?" cried one man.

"She's got to stand it!" cried the captain. "She's just got to! Pull, men; you're not half hauling!"

"If that rope gives," faltered an old, gray-haired man, who seemed too aged for this life, "if that rope gives way"

"Don't you talk about it!" snapped the captain. "I'll take all the responsibility of that rope. It'll hold all right. I looked at it the other day. All you've got to do is pull! Do you hear me? Pull as you never pulled before!"

Once more the backs of the men bent to the strain. The moving picture boys, watching and waiting; filled with anxiety even as they filmed the wreck, saw that the rise and fall of the waves had a good deal to do with the rescue.

"They can pull better when the waves don't wash over those two poor souls in the buoy," observed Blake.

"Yes, there's less resistance," agreed Joe. "Oh, there comes a big one!" and, as he spoke, an immense comber buried from sight the two whom the life-savers were endeavoring to pull from the grip of the sea.

"If they can only hold their breaths long