He contrived to get the fellow in the buoy and away while Tom was climbing carefully down.
There remained now the great problem of the people on the mizzenmast. The deck was impassable. Not only that, but the ship was beginning to break up. Her bow had been bitten off raggedly by the sea. It was impossible to tell where she would split or when. She might break in twain amidships. In that case the mainmast would almost certainly go by the board, Dick and Tom would both be lost, the connection with the shore would be broken, and in all likelihood not another soul would reach the beach alive.
They had rescued four. There were three on the mizzenmast. A full half of the crew had certainly been drowned, some, perhaps, going down when the foremast had broken off.
Something like a miracle happened as Dick Hand and Keeper Tom stood together again in the maintop, having sent four men ashore.
A wave of unusual height rose up, shone inkily against the blackness of the sky, curled, and burst, burying the poop deck completely and falling with all its might against the base of the mizzenmast. There was a noise of splitting wood and of rending stays that rose above the loud song of the wind in the rigging, and with a tremendous crash the mizzenmast fell. By some freak of circumstance it fell straight to windward, and the wind and some resisting fibres of wood at the point of fracture retarded its fall. It came down slowly, tearing through the outer main rigging to windward, the mizzen topmast shearing things down. For the moment the mizzenmast rested squarely on the main upper topsail yard halfway out, then as the ship rolled slightly it came inboard and close to the mast. Dick and Tom, watching anxiously and in terror, waited to see what it would do. But it had done what it had to do. There it rested, close to the mainmast, supported by the main upper topsail yard; there it seemed destined to stay for no one knew just how long--perhaps ten seconds, perhaps ten minutes, perhaps an hour.
But the inexplicable chance which had broken off the mizzenmast and laid it carelessly, like a match, diagonally against the mainmast and close to the maintop had shaken from their lashings two of the three human figures that had been visible on it and had brought the third, and only remaining one, almost within arm’s reach of the two rescuers.