With one more glance down, in which he could perceive a dim, wet radiance surrounding the ship like a halo, proceeding from such lights as still were aglow on board, the boy resumed his climb.
The most perilous part of it still lay before him. So far, he had climbed a good broad "ladder"-the ratlines stretched between the three stout steel shrouds. From the cross-trees to the top of the slender mast, there was but a single-breadth foothold between the two shrouds running from the tip of the foremast to the cross-trees.
Far above him, cut off from his vision by darkness and flying scud, Jack knew that the footpath he had to follow narrowed to less than a foot in breadth. At that height the vicious kicking of the mast must be tremendous.
It was equivalent to being placed on the end of a giant, pliable whip while a Gargantuan Brobdingnagian driver tried to flick you off.
But Jack gritted his teeth, and through the screeching wind began the last lap of his soul-rasping ascent.
He was flung about till his head swam. His ascent was pitifully slow and tortuous. The reeling mast seemed to have a vicious determination to hurtle him through s.p.a.ce into the vortex of waters below him, over which he was swung dizzily hither and yon.
But at last, somehow, with reeling brain, cut and bleeding hands and exhausted limbs, he reached the summit and stretched out cramped fingers for the aerials.
With the other hand he clung to the shrouds, and with legs wrapped round them in a death-like grip, he was dashed back and forth through midair like a shuttle-c.o.c.k.
CHAPTER VII
QUARTERMASTER SCHULTZ VOLUNTEERS
Clinging with his interlocked lower limbs, Jack managed to draw on his insulated rubber gloves. Then he fumbled, with fear gripping at his cold heart, for his electric torch, which every wireless man carries for just such emergencies.
He pressed the b.u.t.ton and a small, pitifully small, arc of light fell on the aerials where they were secured to the mast. Far beneath him on the bridge, the first officer and the wondering captain-who had been summoned from his berth-watched the infinitesimal fire-fly of light as it flickered and swayed at the top of the mast.
The storm wrack flew low and at times it was shut out from their gaze altogether. At such times both men gripped the rail with a dreadful fear that the brave lad, working far above them, had paid the penalty of his devotion to duty with his life.
But every time that they looked up after such a temporary extinguishment of the flickering light, they saw it still winking like the tiny night-eye of a gnome above them in dark s.p.a.ce.
With fingers dulled by the thick rubber covering which he dared not remove, Jack worked among the aerial terminals. One by one he counted the strands.
One, two, three, four, five.
Yes, they were all there. But he did not count them as fast as that.
Instead, between the fingering of one and another an interval of ten minutes might elapse, during which time he was flung from pole to pole, dry mouthed and dizzy.
Then came a sudden flash of lightning outlining the rigging, the steel hull far below him, the anxious figures on the bridge and the angry heavens in blue, glaring flame. But Jack had no eye for this. The sudden light had shown him a jagged rip in the insulation of the wires where they were joined to the mast rigging. Through this, current had been leaking into the mast and robbing the aerials of their power of sending or receiving, short circuiting the Hertzian waves.
Jack waited for a lull and then, almost dead with nausea and brain sickness from his wild buffeting, he reached for his electrician"s tape and began making hasty repairs on the electric leak. He bound coil after coil of the adhesive stuff around the exposed wire, till it was blanketed beyond chance of "spilling" into the rain.
Then, his work done, he rested for an instant to steady his whirling senses, and then began the long descent.
Now that the job was over, he felt that he could never live to reach the deck, miles and miles-hundreds and hundreds of miles-below him. Step by step, though, he descended, fighting for his life against the sense numbness that was creeping over him. Limbs and intelligence seemed equally absent. He felt as if he were a disembodied being, floating through s.p.a.ce on the wings of the storm.
He appeared to have no weight. Like a thistle bloom he thought that he might be blown where the winds wished. Conquering this feeling, it was succeeded by a leaden one. He was too heavy to move. His feet felt enormous, and heavy as a deep-sea diver"s weighted boots. His head was balloon-like and appeared to sway crazily on his shoulders.
But he still descended. Step by step, painfully, semi-consciously, the brain-sick, nauseated boy clung to the ratlines. On his grip depended his life, and this, in a dim, stupid sort of way, he realized.
If he could only reach the cross-trees! Here he could rest in comparative security for a while.
He must reach them, he must! He wasn"t going to die like this. A furious fighting spirit came over him. His head suddenly cleared; the deadly nausea left him; his limbs grew light.
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 ship, 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 ship 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 rushing 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.