At the word the boat left the ship, the crew plying their oars with great difficulty, because of the encumbering weed. So they soon shipped oars, and took their paddles--every whaleboat having five of these primitive but exceedingly useful propellers stowed in their beckets under the thwarts--and with much laborious effort urged their boat shoreward. As they neared the black, forbidding cliffs the officer’s heart sank, for he saw how apparently inaccessible they were, and how the gigantic southern swell, with never a foamy break, rose and fell against those awful precipices. The long streamers of kelp like multitudinous serpents writhed around the bared rock bases, then disappeared as the whole mighty body of water lifted, lifted, lifted until it seemed as if it must submerge the mountain tops. And still that tiny white rag fluttered forth its agonising message: ‘Come and save us.’
Be it noted that while Mr. Peck was fully alive to the tremendous danger awaiting him and his brave fellows, the possibility of his not being able to fulfil his errand of mercy never occurred to him. He was one of those wonderful fellows who never calculate beforehand the chances of defeat. And these are the men who do great deeds, although it be accounted criminal in war to neglect the keeping open of a line of retreat. So by every encouraging word he could speak he urged the toiling crew to greater effort, until the kelp became so thick that paddling was no longer possible, and they had perforce to haul the boat along by grasping the long strands of black vegetation that rose and fell rhythmically around them. Nearer and nearer they drew, near enough to distinguish a forlorn little company of people clambering precariously over the rocks and making (as yet) unintelligible signs to them. Nearer and nearer yet, until it became evident that the refugees were waving them towards a gigantic escarpment which rose fully five hundred feet almost perpendicularly from the sea, and at one angle seemed to present an edge just like a jagged sabre. They altered their course in obedience to these frantic signallings, and presently found themselves fighting for life against the heave and hurl of the swell, which suddenly seemed to have found force that was lacking before when they were farther from the land. The ropes of kelp slithered through their bleeding hands, great fronds arose mysteriously from the blackness and swept across the boat, scourging them as with giant whips; they cowered and groaned, and begged for mercy in undertones, but toiled on. And then, when all their efforts appeared to have failed because the poor human machines could no longer respond to the merciless call made upon them, came a blessed lull, the boat swept round the sabre-edge of the cliff, and there, free from kelp, was a tiny crevasse with deep blue water just gently rising and falling, and a ledge of clean rock running all round it. Upon this ledge was clustered a strange company, savage and weird-looking, long elf-locks bleached by wind and storm, garments of every imaginable material and shape. Ten of this company were crouching at the edge nearest the boat with uplifted hands and streaming eyes.