Accordingly, soon after daybreak, Mr. Marsh bawled, “Wear ship,” following this order with “Port fore brace!”
The mate was clinging to the ladder on the lee side of the forward house when he gave these orders, and before his watch started to execute them, he spoke a few words of warning. “Now, men, you all know there’s an ugly sea running, so look out for yourselves, and don’t shift about without holding fast to the life-lines. Port fore brace! Andrew, you stand by the starboard brace ready to slack away.”
Jack and Montana were at the wheel, and Jumbo was at the lookout. All the others save Andrew, pulled on the brace until the mate shouted “Belay! Now haul in your slack to starboard.” They started to cross the swimming deck, the sea being then on the beam. Some had reached the starboard brace, others were in the middle of the deck; while Gene, who had stopped to make the port brace fast, was not a third of the distance across. At this moment the ship gave a wild roll, and the next, when her starboard bulwarks were far down, an immense “green sea”—a solid wall of water—broke on board.
What followed baffles description. Those who had hold of the starboard brace escaped by clinging tightly to it and ducking beneath the bulwarks, where they were buried under several feet of water, but the others fared worse, being exposed to the full force of the sea. Whether Norris, Smith, and Harry grasped the life-lines or not, they never could clearly tell, but when the ship rolled to port, the great sea swept them before it like flies. All three, by a providential circumstance, were knocked down and jammed in between the iron stanchions and a spare spar lashed to the bulwarks,—all that saved them from going overboard.
But poor Gene! He was caught up like a bit of chaff, and whirled away over the submerged port bulwarks. Everyone near by, including the mate, had all he could do to save his own life, and none of them knew for a few moments what had happened. Captain Meade, from the quarter-deck, saw the awful accident, and his cry of “Man overboard!” and Gene’s despairing shriek mingled together. The captain was a cool man, and he desperately hurled a coil of rope in less time than it takes to tell it, but even had the lost man been able to grasp it, he could no more have held on at the rate the ship was going than he could have seized a flash of lightning. Before the words “Man overboard” were well out of the speaker’s mouth, the poor fellow was disappearing astern; his white face and yellow sou’-wester being plainly visible for several minutes.