We stood there for a minute hanging on, and waiting for resolution to
come back to us after the shock of grounding. On the weather side the
seas struck and curled over the brig with a noise like thunder, and the
force of countless tons. They came over the top of the deck-house in a
cataract of solid water, and there was a crash, crash, crash of rending
wood, as plank after plank gave way before that stern assault. We could
feel the deck-house itself quiver, and shake again as we stood with our
backs against it, and at last it moved so much that we knew it must soon
be washed over on us.

The moment had come. 'We must go after the next big wave runs back,'
Elzevir shouted. 'Jump when I give the word, and get as far up the
pebbles as you can before the next comes in: they will throw us a
rope's-end to catch; so now good-bye, John, and God save us both!'

I wrung his hand, and took off my convict clothes, keeping my boots on to
meet the pebbles, and was so cold that I almost longed for the surf. Then
we stood waiting side by side till a great wave came in, turning the
space 'twixt ship and shore into a boiling caldron: a minute later 'twas
all sucked back again with a roar, and we jumped.

I fell on hands and feet where the water was a yard deep under the ship,
but got my footing and floundered through the slop, in a desperate
struggle to climb as high as might be on the beach before the next wave
came in. I saw the string of men lashed together and reaching down as
far as man might, to save any that came through the surf, and heard them
shout to cheer us, and marked a coil of rope flung out. Elzevir was by
my side and saw it too, and we both kept our feet and plunged forward
through the quivering slack water; but then there came an awful thunder
behind, the crash of the sea over the wreck, and we knew that another
mountain wave was on our heels. It came in with a swishing roar, a rush
and rise of furious water that swept us like corks up the beach, till we
were within touch of the rope's-end, and the men shouted again to
hearten us as they flung it out. Elzevir seized it with his left hand
and reached out his right to me. Our fingers touched, and in that very
moment the wave fell instantly, with an awful suck, and I was swept
down the beach again. Yet the under-tow took me not back to sea, for
amid the floating wreckage floated the shattered maintop, and in the
truck of that great spar I caught, and so was left with it