on with all his might to save himself from being pitched into the
water by a fresh jerk of the mast and a fresh inundation of flying surge.
When he could look at her again she was far out on the hawser, rising and
falling in quick, violent, perilous swings, caught at by the toppling
breakers and howled at by the undertow. Another deluge blinded him; as
soon as he could he gazed shoreward again, and shrieked with joy; she was
being carefully lifted from the sling; she was saved--if she was not dead.

When the apparatus was hauled back to the top the captain said to
Thurstane, "Your turn now."

The young man hesitated, glanced around for Coronado and Garcia, and
replied, "Those first."

It was not merely humanity, and not at all good-will toward these two men,
which held him back from saving his life first; it was mainly that motto
of nobility, that phrase which has such a mighty influence in the army,
"_An officer and a gentleman_." He believed that he would disgrace his
profession and himself if he should quit the wreck while any civilian
remained upon it.

Coronado, leaving his uncle to the care of a sailor, had already climbed
the shrouds, and was now crawling through the lubber hole into the top.
For once his hardihood was beaten; he was pale, tremulous and obviously in
extreme terror; he clutched at the sling the moment he was pointed to it.
With the utmost care, and without even a look of reproach, Thurstane
helped secure him in the loops and launched him on his journey. Next came
the turn of Garcia. The old man seemed already dead. He was livid, his
lips blue, his hands helpless, his voice gone, his eyes glazed and set. It
was necessary to knot him into the sling as tightly as if he were a
corpse; and when he reached shore it could be seen that he was borne off
like a dead weight.

"Now then," said the captain to Thurstane. "We can't go till you do.
Passengers first."

Exhausted by his drenchings, and by a kind of labor to which he was not
accustomed, the lieutenant obeyed this order, took his place in the sling,
nodded good-by to the brave sailors, and was hurled out of the top by a
plunge of surf, as a criminal is pushed from the cart by the hangman.

No idea has been given, and no complete idea can be given, of the
difficulties, sufferings, and perils of this transit shoreward. Owing to
the rising and falling of the mast, the hawser now tautened with a jerk
which flung the voyager up against it or even