"You heard my orders," he said, sharply. "There are lives to be saved and it is not a question whether the boat will live. We will make her live. Call for volunteers if the men have any scruples about trusting themselves with me, but get the boat into the water at once. Every minute counts."
He was gone but a second and emerged from the cabin in a heavy suit of oilskins. He sprang nimbly down the companionway to the deck.
"Who goes with me in the boat?" he shouted to the assembled crew.
"I, sir, and I," cried the men in chorus, all anxious to be in the boat with their commander.
"You, and you, and you," he shouted, as he designated six men with a quick movement of his forefinger. The men tumbled over the side into the boat that was tossing like a cockle shell in the waves that threatened to dash her to pieces against the big steamer. The captain slipped over the side and took his place in the stern. It was a difficult task to get the boat safely off, but it was finally accomplished by skill and strength; and as she rode away from the side on the top of a nasty roller she was greeted with a cheer from the disappointed men who had been left behind and who longed to be with their commander in his perilous undertaking.
As they rowed away from the steamer there was no sign in the darkness of the little boat they had run down, but the man at the tiller steered as determinedly as if he knew for just what point in the blackness he was headed. With his head bent slightly forward and his big body swaying with the rock and pitch of the lifeboat he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead.
Suddenly he half rose in the tossing boat and shouted to the rowers, who were bending their backs to the oars that every now and then would sink deep into a towering wave and the next instant swing viciously through the air as the boat rolled up on the crest of a big billow.
"Steady all," he called in a deep growl. "Now hold her."
The men dug their oars into the tumbling sea in an effort to bring the boat to a standstill, but the waves caught her and hurried her on. The sailors caught a fleeting glimpse in the darkness of the bottom of an upturned boat to which three boys were clinging. The man at the tiller swung the boat's head around as they swept by and, caught broadside on by a big wave, she rolled for a moment as if she was about to capsize. But the trained sailors held stoutly to the leeward oars, and the boat righted herself and rose like a cork on the wave and settled down so close to the wrecked yacht that the man in the stern leaned over and tossed the end of a rope beyond the heads of the boys.