"
Lennard had kneeled with the others, and he said, "Shall I go?"
"You're too heavy, Tom. You'll over-drive the boat. I'll chance all."
Even to get into that boat was a terrible undertaking, for the smack was
showing her keel, and the wall-siders made it likely that the boat would
overbalance and fall backward like a rearing horse. Six times Ferrier
had his foot on the rail ready to make his lithe, flying bound into the
cockleshell; six times she was spun away like a foambell--returning to
crash against the side as the smack hove up high. At last the doctor
fairly fell over the rail, landed astride on the boat's gunwale, and
from thence took a roll to the bottom and lay in the swashing water.
Then delicately, cautiously, the skipper and his man picked their way
with short, catchy strokes--mere dabs at the boiling foam.
"God bless you," Tom sang out, and the big fellow was touched when he
heard the weak voices of the patients below, crying "God bless you!"
with a shrillness that pierced above the hollow rattle of the wind,
"There goes the boat up, perpendicularly as it appears. Ah! that's over
her. No; it's broken aside. What a long time she is in coming up. Here's
a cross sea! Ferrier's baling. Oh! it's too much. Oh! my poor friend!
Here's a screamer! God be praised--she's topped it! Will the smack hit
her? Go under his lee if you love me. They've got the rope now. In he
goes, smash on his face! Just like him, the idiot--Lord bless his face
and him!" Thomas hung on to the rigging and muttered thus, to his own
great easement.
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