Part 5 (2/2)

Jack shouted aloud and came swiftly down. He called out defiantly at the storm. He raved, he yelled in wild delirium.

All at once he felt the cross-trees under his feet. With a last loud cry of triumph he sank down on the projecting steel pieces that formed, at any rate, a resting place.

Then came another wild swing of the s.h.i.+p, and a vicious gust.

Jack felt himself flung from the cross-trees and out into the dark void of the storm.

Down, down, down he went, straight as a stone toward the dark, black, raging vortex through which the s.h.i.+p was fighting.

He felt rather than heard a despairing cry; but did not know whether it had come from his lips or not.

Then a rus.h.i.+ng dark cloud enveloped him, and with a fearful roaring in his ears, Jack's senses swam out to sea.

”The light has disappeared, Metcalf. Do you think the poor lad is lost?”

Far below on the bridge, Captain McDonald, oil-skinned like his officer, peered upward.

”The good Lord alone knows, sir,” was the fervent reply. ”It was a madcap thing to do. I should never have let him go.”

”It's done now,” muttered the captain. ”Though, had you consulted me, I should have forbidden it. That boy is the bravest of the brave.”

”He is, sir. You may well say that. A seasoned sailorman might have hesitated to go aloft to-night.”

”I wish to heaven I knew what had become of him and if he is safe, yet I wouldn't order another man up there in this inferno.”

There was a voice behind him.

”Vouldt you accepdt idt a volunteer, sir?”

”You, Schultz?” exclaimed the captain, turning around to the old quartermaster who was just going off his trick of duty at the wheel.

”Why, man, you'd be taking your life in your hands.”

”I've been up der masts of sheeps off der Horn on vorse nights dan dees,” was the calm reply. ”Ledt me go, sir.”

”You go at your own responsibility, then,” was the reply. ”I ought not to let you up at all, and yet that boy-go ahead, then.”

The old German quartermaster saluted and was gone.

From the bridge they saw him for a moment, in the gleam of light from a porthole, crossing the wet deck.

He clambered into the shrouds and then began climbing upward along the perilous path Jack had already traveled.

”Pray Heaven we have not two deaths to our account to-night, Metcalf,”

said the captain earnestly to his first officer.

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