Time seemed to stand still and the world to poise on its poles as Ned shot through the narrow opening. A thunder boom sounded in his ears and his soul appeared to be flying from his mouth. With quick instinct—it was no conscious effort of will,—he had spread his legs as he fell, turning his feet outward, as he had often done in the gymnasium when hanging from a bar. It was that swift movement, and that alone, that saved him from plunging straight down to the depths of the sea or striking the iron decks so far below him.
There he clung, head downward, sustained only by the grip of his feet on two steel posts. Every muscle of his body was strained to its utmost tension. His brain seemed bursting. With every[116] heave and roll of the ship he was swung far out and then back again, with every likelihood that if his foothold was not broken his head would be dashed against a steel brace.
Below from the bridge came a horrified cry:—
“Great Scott, sir! Look at that!”
“It’s Gunner’s-Mate Strong!” groaned the Captain.
“Look, sir, the other man, Sharp, his name is, has seen his plight. He’s trying to haul him aboard.”
“Good heavens, they’ll both go! Man the mast there! Jump aloft! Look alive, men! Poor boy! Poor boy!”
Up the ladder sprang a red-headed youth. It was Herc, and behind him swarmed a half dozen Jackies who had seen the peril of their ship-mate.
“Oh, they’ll never save him! Never!” cried the navigating officer with a groan.
Suddenly a second horrified shout went up from bridge and deck. Ned had made a frantic[117] effort to grab the mast on one of his wild swings. At the same instant Sharp appeared to be laying hold of his feet to try and drag him back into the top. Those who had set up that groan of dismay had seen Ned’s feet suddenly slip out of position.
“He’s gone!” cried the captain, half turning away.
Some of the crew shut their eyes. Ned had lost his hold and was doomed either to be drowned,—for in that sea it would have been impossible to launch a boat,—or else to be dashed to atoms on the steel decks of the dreadnought.
But the next instant a glad cry of renewed hope went up. It was a yell, a frantic shout of encouragement and joy.
Ned had somehow managed, by the instinct of self-preservation, to seize a stay, and there he hung, swaying wildly back and forth as the ship rolled, but still gripping it in a firm grasp.
“Can he hang on?”
[118]
That was the question that agitated every man who was watching the lad’s plucky battle for life.
“Stick to it, Ned!” cried the sailors encouragingly.
“Hang on, old boy! We’ll help you out of it in a brace of shakes.”
But these cries, meant to encourage Ned, were not practical of execution. It was manifestly impossible to reach him. His salvation lay in his own hands and he must work it out alone.
Herc had, by this time, reached the top and now hung over the rail in an agony of apprehension. There hung his comrade, twenty feet below him, dangling high above the decks on a slender wire stay and he was as powerless to aid him as if he had been a hundred miles away. But he shouted encouragement.
Suddenly there came a voice at his back. It was Sharp.
“He’s a goner for sure,” he muttered indifferently.
[119]
Herc faced around on him like a thunderbolt. His red hair bristled like the hackles on an angry dog.
“Say that again, will you?” he demanded fiercely, his freckled fists clenching.
“I only said that there wasn’t a chance for him to get away with it,” rejoined Sharp, a leer spreading over his countenance. “He stands no more chance of being saved than a snowball in a furnace.”
“Oh, you think so, do you? Well, just let me tell you one thing, Ned Strong has got out of worse scrapes than the one he’s in right now. If it’s humanly possible, he’ll save himself yet, in spite of such croakers as you.”
Sharp slunk away before Herc’s broadside. He could not meet the other’s eyes.
“I did all I could to keep him from falling, but I couldn’t get him in,” he muttered.
A sudden shout from the decks attracted Herc’s attention at this moment. He rushed to[120] the edge of the top and beheld the most amazing specimen of grit in the face of overwhelming odds that he had ever witnessed.
The stay which Ned had caught stretched between the fore and the after masts. From it were suspended the signal halliards, the nether end of which ropes were on the bridge. Hand over hand, and painfully slowly, Ned was working himself along this stay. He appeared to have lost his presence of mind for the time being, for, instead of coming back to the after mast, he began working his way forward.
“Come back! Come back!” yelled Herc frenziedly.
“The other way! The other!” shouted officers and men, but Ned appeared not to hear them.
“Oh, he’ll never make it!” groaned Captain Dunham. “Poor lad! Poor lad!”
And now began a spectacle that none of those who beheld it ever forgot. It was photographed indelibly on the minds of every witness, officer and enlisted man.
[121]
It was seen that, provided Ned could hold on long enough, his progress must bring him above the funnels, belching hot, suffocating gases and blinding, cinder-laden smoke. Captain Dunham sent a man below to order the fires smothered instantly so as to minimize the amount of vapor issuing from the funnels.
“I don’t believe that the lad has one chance in a thousand,” he said with an unaccustomed quaver in his voice, “but we’ll leave nothing undone to help him out.”
“That’s just the trouble, sir,” rejoined the navigating officer, “there’s so little we can do. It’s almost unbearable to have to stand here helplessly and watch that brave struggle.”
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