They were silent, and gasped. They
gripped rails, they had wound ropes'-ends under their arms; they
clutched ringbolts, they crawled in heaps where there was foothold; they
held on with both arms, hooked themselves to anything to windward with
elbows, with chins, almost with their teeth: and some, unable to crawl
away from where they had been flung, felt the sea leap up, striking
against their backs as they struggled upwards. Singleton had stuck to
the wheel. His hair flew out in the wind; the gale seemed to take its
life-long adversary by the beard and shake his old head. He wouldn't let
go, and, with his knees forced between the spokes, flew up and down like
a man on a bough. As Death appeared unready, they began to look about.
Don-kin, caught by one foot in a loop of some rope, hung, head down,
below us, and yelled, with his face to the deck:--"Cut! Cut!" Two men
lowered themselves cautiously to him; others hauled on the rope. They
caught him up, shoved him into a safer place, held him. He shouted
curses at the master, shook his fist at him with horrible blasphemies,
called upon us in filthy words to "Cut! Don't mind that murdering fool!
Cut, some of you!" One of his rescuers struck him a back-handed blow
over the mouth; his head banged on the deck, and he became suddenly very
quiet, with a white face, breathing hard, and with a few drops of blood
trickling from his cut lip.
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