"What you're going for is to save life, not to drown your boat's crew for nothing," he growled severely in my ear.But as we shoved off he leaned over and cried out: "It all rests on the power of your arms, men.Give way for life!"We made a race of it, and I would never have believed that a common boat's crew of a merchantman could keep up so much determined fierceness in the regular swing of their stroke.What our captain had clearly perceived before we left had become plain to all of us since.The issue of our enterprise hung on a hair above that abyss of waters which will not give up its dead till the Day of Judgment.
It was a race of two ship's boats matched against Death for a prize of nine men's lives, and Death had a long start.We saw the crew of the brig from afar working at the pumps - still pumping on that wreck, which already had settled so far down that the gentle, low swell, over which our boats rose and fell easily without a check to their speed, welling up almost level with her head-rails, plucked at the ends of broken gear swinging desolately under her naked bowsprit.
We could not, in all conscience, have picked out a better day for our regatta had we had the free choice of all the days that ever dawned upon the lonely struggles and solitary agonies of ships since the Norse rovers first steered to the westward against the run of Atlantic waves.It was a very good race.At the finish there was not an oar's length between the first and second boat, with Death coming in a good third on the top of the very next smooth swell, for all one knew to the contrary.The scuppers of the brig gurgled softly all together when the water rising against her sides subsided sleepily with a low wash, as if playing about an immovable rock.Her bulwarks were gone fore and aft, and one saw her bare deck low-lying like a raft and swept clean of boats, spars, houses - of everything except the ringbolts and the heads of the pumps.I had one dismal glimpse of it as I braced myself up to receive upon my breast the last man to leave her, the captain, who literally let himself fall into my arms.
It had been a weirdly silent rescue - a rescue without a hail, without a single uttered word, without a gesture or a sign, without a conscious exchange of glances.Up to the very last moment those on board stuck to their pumps, which spouted two clear streams of water upon their bare feet.Their brown skin showed through the rents of their shirts; and the two small bunches of half-naked, tattered men went on bowing from the waist to each other in their back-breaking labour, up and down, absorbed, with no time for a glance over the shoulder at the help that was coming to them.As we dashed, unregarded, alongside a voice let out one, only one hoarse howl of command, and then, just as they stood, without caps, with the salt drying gray in the wrinkles and folds of their hairy, haggard faces, blinking stupidly at us their red eyelids, they made a bolt away from the handles, tottering and jostling against each other, and positively flung themselves over upon our very heads.
The clatter they made tumbling into the boats had an extraordinarily destructive effect upon the illusion of tragic dignity our self-esteem had thrown over the contests of mankind with the sea.On that exquisite day of gently breathing peace and veiled sunshine perished my romantic love to what men's imagination had proclaimed the most august aspect of Nature.The cynical indifference of the sea to the merits of human suffering and courage, laid bare in this ridiculous, panic-tainted performance extorted from the dire extremity of nine good and honourable seamen, revolted me.I saw the duplicity of the sea's most tender mood.It was so because it could not help itself, but the awed respect of the early days was gone.I felt ready to smile bitterly at its enchanting charm and glare viciously at its furies.In a moment, before we shoved off, I had looked coolly at the life of my choice.Its illusions were gone, but its fascination remained.Ihad become a seaman at last.
We pulled hard for a quarter of an hour, then laid on our oars waiting for our ship.She was coming down on us with swelling sails, looking delicately tall and exquisitely noble through the mist.The captain of the brig, who sat in the stern sheets by my side with his face in his hands, raised his head and began to speak with a sort of sombre volubility.They had lost their masts and sprung a leak in a hurricane; drifted for weeks, always at the pumps, met more bad weather; the ships they sighted failed to make them out, the leak gained upon them slowly, and the seas had left them nothing to make a raft of.It was very hard to see ship after ship pass by at a distance, "as if everybody had agreed that we must be left to drown," he added.But they went on trying to keep the brig afloat as long as possible, and working the pumps constantly on insufficient food, mostly raw, till "yesterday evening," he continued monotonously, "just as the sun went down, the men's hearts broke."He made an almost imperceptible pause here, and went on again with exactly the same intonation:
