lt of the
wind, and he had to crawl on all fours toward the sea. He reached the
edge of the cliff just as something like the wings of a gigantic bat
flapped across the dim wet moonlight, and before he realized that this
was the brig he heard the crashing of her spars. The watchers stood up
against the wind, battling with it to fling lines in the vain hope of
saving some sailor who was being churned to death in that dreadful
creaming of the sea below. Yes, and there were forms of men visible on
board; two had climbed the mainmast, which crashed before they could
clutch at the ropes that were being flung to them from land, crashed and
carried them down shrieking into the surge. Mark found it hard to
believe that last summer he had spent many sunlit hours dabbling in the
sand for silver dollars of Portugal lost perhaps on such a night as this
a hundred years ago, exactly where these two poor mariners were lost. A
few minutes after the mainmast the hull went also; but in the nebulous
moonlight nothing could be seen of any bodies alive or dead, nothing
except wreckage tossing upon the surge. The watchers on the cliff turned
away from the wind to gather new breath and give their cheeks a rest
from the stinging fragments of rock and earth. Away up over the towans
they could see the bobbing lanthorns of men hurrying down from Chypie
where news of the wreck had reached; and on the road from Lanyon they
could see lanthorns on the other side of Church Cove waiting until the
tide had ebbed far enough to let them cross the beach.

Suddenly the Vicar shouted:

"I can see a poor fellow hanging on to a ledge of rock. Bring a rope!
Bring a rope!"

Eddowes the coastguard took charge of the operation, and Mark with
beating pulses watched the end of the rope touch the huddled form below.
But either from exhaustion or because he feared to let go of the
slippery ledge for one moment the sailor made no attempt to grasp the
rope. The men above shouted to him, begged him to make an effort; but he
remained there inert.

"Somebody must go down with the rope and get a slip knot under his
arms," the Vicar shouted.

Nobody seemed to pay attention to this proposal, and Mark wondered if he
was the only one who had heard it. However, when the Vicar repeated his
suggestion, Eddowes came forward, knelt down by the edge of the cliff,
shook himself like a bather who is going to plunge into what he knows
will be very cold water, and then vanished down