Fortunately, as in that vessel wrecked long syne on Melita, “the hind part of the ship stuck fast and remained immovable.”
Each wave now struck the ship's weather quarter with a sound like a cannon fired in a church, and sent the water clear into the mizen-top. It hit them like strokes of a whip. They were drenched to the skin, chilled to the bone, and frozen to the heart with fear. They made acquaintance that hour with Death. Ay, Death itself has no bitterness that forlorn cluster did not feel: only the insensibility that ends that bitterness was wanting.
Now the sea, you must know, was literally strewed with things out of the _Agra_; masts, rigging, furniture, tea-chests, bundles of canes, chairs, tables; but of all this jetsam, Dodd's eye had been for some little time fixed on one object: a live sailor drifting ashore on a great wooden case. It struck him after a while that the man made very little way, and at last seemed to go up and down in one place. By-and-bye he saw him nearer and nearer, and recognised him. It was one of the three washed off the bowsprit.
He cried joyfully, “The tide has turned! here's Thompson coming out to sea.”
Then there ensued a dialogue, incredible to landsmen, between these two sailors, the captain of the ship and the captain of the foretop, one perched on a stationary fragment of that vessel, the other drifting on a pianoforte, and both bawling at one another across the jaws of death.
“Going out with the tide, and be d----d to me.”
“Like a brass figure-head. It's all over with poor Jack, sir.”
“All over! Don't tell me! Look out now as you drift under our stern, and we'll lower you the four-inch hawser.”
“Lord bless you, sir, do, pray!” cried Thompson, losing his recklessness with the chance of life.
By this time the shore was black with people, and a boat was brought down to the beach, but to attempt to launch it was to be sucked out to sea.
At present all eyes were fixed on Thompson drifting to destruction.
Dodd cut the four-inch hawser, and Vespasian, on deck, lowered it with a line, so that Thompson presently drifted right athwart it. “All right, sir!” said he, grasping it, and, amidst thundering acclamations, was drawn to land full of salt water and all but insensible. The piano landed at Dunkirk three weeks later.