First jumped Daniel
James, and Dan caught him out of the waters and hauled him in. And he
caught the next, the boat careening, shipping a rush of water. As
Captain Ephraim crouched for the leap, the sough of the rotten hull,
working and heaving like the carcass of a shark, was bursting out in a
score of places and the lumber deck-load rose and fell and quivered and
flailed huge planks into the waves. The end was near. Dan shouted the
skipper to hurry. Ephraim obeyed, and had fought his way through the
caldron to the boat and was dragged aboard, when suddenly, with a great
straining sigh, the hull of the wreck parted amidships, both ends
sinking in the waters. A comber rushed in between, swelling and
hissing. The lumber deck-load rose in the air like a living thing.
The remaining fastenings holding it to the deck parted, and there was a
rending and grinding as it slued off into the sea, carrying with it the
main-mast, which crashed down and impaled the bar on which the wreck
rested.
The currents had carried the rowboat almost--quite, in fact--in front
of this terrible heaving mass of wood, one hundred feet long and
chained together to a height of ten feet--and only the mainmast, which
seemed to be serving as a sort of anchor, held it. Dan saw the danger,
and the shouts of those on the _Fledgling_ told him that they had seen
it too.
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