ut an occasional lifting of a hand, a flash of a
gray face, showed that they were men and that they still lived and
hoped. Under them, over the deck raced the breakers, waist deep, each
one a swift, excited trip-hammer. It was only the lumber that was
holding the aged hull together. As it was, sections of the sides had
ripped out and planks and pieces of deal issuing from the gashes
littered the waters. Three times had the life-savers launched their
boats, and three times they had been cast on the beach like logs, while
thrice had the lines from their mortars fallen short.

"Go on back; we'll take care of her."

And Dan, his teeth bared and coated with blood from anger-bitten lips,
gave the wheel to Mulhatton, ran from the pilot-house, and shook his
fist at the big wrecking tug.

"Why don't you take care of her then, curse you! Why don't you take
care of her? Don't you see there are lives to save? Oh, you cowardly
beasts!"

"Nothin' doin' till the sea goes down," came the reply, and Dan sobbed
aloud in his rage as he entered the pilot-house, where most of the crew
were gathered, peering out of the windows at the tragedy across the
waters.

The men in the rigging could be seen plainly now. There was no
excitement. They kept very still, watching the futile efforts of the
life-savers, waving their hands occasionally as though in token of
their thanks and their knowledge of the utter futility of human
efforts. No, there was no excitement; the uncertainty that breeds that
was lacking. Fate was simply clamping its damp hand down over those
men. Such things are always quiet--there is nothing to thrill the
heart or stir the soul in them. It is just a mighty thing dealing
death to weaklings, that is all. And we wonder whether the All-seeing
Eye does not sometimes close in sheer pity, to shut out the inequality
of it.

While they looked, a venomous wave got under the bow and lifted it
high. Then down it went as a man would crash his palms together,
bursting out the forepeak like a rotten apple. Thus weakened forward,
the loss of the foremast was an imminent certainty. And there were two
men in the fore rigging! Captain Ephraim leaned far out from the
mainmast; the tug men could see him plainly as he pointed at the
tottering mast and then at the deck.

"He wants them to leave the mast and go into the mainmast," cried
Mulhatton.

"But they won't--see, they are shaking their heads 'no,'" shouted Dan.
"T