Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/310

284 night until the jerky signal came ashore that all was made fast. The surfmen tailed on and the breeches-buoy was dragged shoreward. At length a sodden shape, coughing and groaning, was pulled up on the sand by the men who rushed among the combers. Four more trips the breeches-buoy made, and three more sailors were fetched ashore alive. The last of these was asked how many were left aboard and he gasped:

"Nobody but the skipper, an' he's hangin' on by his toenails."

On shore they waited in vain for a signal, and none came. It was more ominous when the hawser slackened. It was read as a death-warrant when the hawser yielded to the tautening heave of the surfmen, yielded with sickening ease and came washing and writhing in to them, hand over hand, broken adrift from the wreck. The little group on the thundering beach stared across the ghastly water at the dissolving lump of the schooner, knowing by instinct that it would be foolishly futile to shoot another line seaward. They waited, and it was all that they could do.