The deck-hand and fireman
started to bring them in, while Dan gave the signal for Crampton to go
ahead.
The tug started timidly forward and then hesitated and trembled. A
wave hit her, and she rocked like a cork. The jump had all gone out of
her. Another wave struck her and almost hove her down, and then
another wave snapped her back again, jerking out the funnel, which
hissed overside into the sea. Half on her side, she clanked into the
trough. She struggled to right herself and had partly succeeded, when
a mighty wave smote her viciously on her listed side. She went over to
her beam ends and lay there a second, while Dan and his men shot
through the windows, off from the deck, into the sea. Another instant
and the _Fledgling_ rolled her keel to the morning light and swiftly
disappeared.
As Dan rose on a wave he saw her go, saw too, the white face of his
engineer framed in the engine-room doorway, which a wave filled just as
she turned, obliterating the face forever.
The next few minutes were nothing but a buffeting, swirling confusion.
Suddenly a line struck Dan's face . . . his hands closed upon a
circular life preserver. . . . The next instant he lay gasping on the
deck of the _Veiled Ladye_, beside his deck-hand and mate.
Half an hour later, Dan, in warm clothes, sat upon the pitching deck of
the yacht, at the doorway of the saloon.
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