Zeb's chief difficulty would be to
catch a grip or footing on the reef where the sea again grew broken, and
his foremost dread lest cramp should seize him in the bitterly cold
water. Rising on the swell, he could spy the seaman tossing and sinking
on the mast just ahead.
As it happened, he was spared the main peril of the reef, for in fifty
more strokes he found himself plunging down into a smooth trough of
water with the mast directly beneath. As he shot down, the mast rose to
him, he flung his arms out over it, and was swept up, clutching it, to
the summit of the next swell.
Oddly enough, his first thought, as he hung there, was not for the man
he had come to save, but for that which had turned him pale when first
he glanced through the telescope. The foremast across which he lay was
complete almost to the royal-mast, though the yards were gone; and to
his left, just above the battered fore-top, five men were lashed, dead
and drowned. Most of them had their eyes wide open, and seemed to stare
at Zeb and wriggle about in the stir of the sea as if they lived.
Spent and wretched as he was, it lifted his hair. He almost called out
to them at first, and then he dragged his gaze off them, and turned it
to the right.
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