But
with No. 1 there was some hitch. The boatswain had unshackled the
fall-ropes aft, and the boat slewed off with the jerk of a heavy wave.
"Clear away there forward, blast you!"
Two seamen were tugging at the fall-block. Something had fouled. The
"Starlight" was rearing head stern up; her shattered bows were already
under the waves; her life was now a matter of seconds only.
"Cut the ropes, you blasted idiots!"
Before the two men could get their knives through the tough rope, the
"Starlight" reared like a bucking mare and plunged to her grave,
dragging with her lifeboat No. 1 and its eight occupants.
"Jump for it!" yelled the boatswain.
Matheson, one foot caught under a seat, was dragged down and down until
his heart hammered like a piston and his lungs were bursting with the
fierce effort to hold his breath.
To the drowning man there comes a moment when he perforce gives up the
fight and abandons himself to the blessed peace of unconsciousness, like
a wanderer in a snowstorm lying down to rest. That moment had come to
Matheson, when suddenly the half-severed rope that shackled the lifeboat
to the doomed yacht gave way, and with a mutinous jerk the boat rushed
itself to the surface, bottom upwards, flinging Matheson clear.
His craving lungs opened to the free air; he lay back on his cork-jacket
gulping it in greedily as the whirlpool formed by the sinking yacht
carried him round and round in dizzy circles.
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