"'Man overboard!' I yelled; and, seizing a backstay, I slid down on deck, repeating my warning in the descent.
"There is no cry that will nerve a seaman to greater exertion than the one that tells him a shipmate is in dire peril, and although each one worked fiercely and with the natural strength of two men, the vessel had swept fully a mile ahead before we could lay the main-yard aback and so heave the ship to. Nimble hands cast one of the lee boats adrift from her gripes, and the mate, followed by five seamen, tumbled into her, and were lowered to the water alongside.
"'I will burn a flare,' called the captain, 'so that you may keep the ship in sight!'
"Four of the sailors pulled at the long oars with powerful, sweeping strokes, while the second mate guided the little vessel back into the blackness of the night, and I stood in the bows peering ahead and sending a ringing shout of encouragement across the waters every minute or two. But not one of us expected to see poor Porter again; for although he was known as a strong swimmer, how long, we reasoned, could he keep afloat in that breaking sea, weighted down with his clothes--a suit of oil-skins, and heavy sea-boots? However, we worked as zealously as though the sight of a shipmate's struggling, drowning, beseeching face were before us. The ship had been running free when Porter fell from the yard, so to fetch the place where he had first sunk we had only to pull dead against wind and sea. The men labored at the oars until their breath was drawn in choking gasps, and the heavy oak blades were almost swept from cramped and weakened arms.
"'Cease rowing, and listen!' called the mate.
"The ceaseless washing of the waves was the only sound that reached us. The ship had continued to drift from us under the influence of the wind upon her hull and rigging, and although we could still make out the flare that was burned over her quarter, it had grown so faint with distance that it now showed only as a blot of fire far away to leeward. Then we 'darned the water,' as it is called, pulling this way and that, while all the time I sent powerful cries into the teeth of the gale. At last we gave up the search, and turned the boat's head around for the ship. Not a word was spoken, each one of us silently busy with his own gloomy thoughts, picturing a lost companion sinking down and down through the unfathomable depths of the sea, to find at last a resting-place upon the white sand and coral of the ocean's bed. Only the thump, thump of oars against rowlocks; only the incessant seething of the curling crests; only the hissing of the rain as it smote the water about us, and oars rose and fell mechanically as the boat went staggering down to where the glowworm light showed the ship to be.