Easy does it!’ Wamibo, maddened with the excitement hung head down and insanely urged us: -- ‘Hoo! Strook Page 51'im! Hoo! Hoo!’ We were afraid he would fall in and kill one of us and, hurriedly, we entreated the boatswain to ‘shove the blamed Finn overboard.’ Then, all together, we yelled down at the planks: -- ‘Stand from under! Get forward.’ and listened. We only heard the deep hum and moan of the wind above us, the mingled roar and hiss of the seas. The ship, as if overcome with despair, wallowed lifelessly, and our heads swam with that unnatural motion. Belfast clamoured: -- ‘For the love of God, Jimmy, where are ye?....Knock!
Jimmy darlint!....Knock! You bloody black beast! Knock!’ He was as quiet as a dead man inside a grave; and, like men standing above a grave, we were on the verge of tears -- but with vexation, the strain, the fatigue;with the great longing to be done with it, to get away, and lay down to rest somewhere where we could see our danger and breathe, Archie shouted:
-- ‘Gi'e me room!’ We crouched behind him, guarding our heads, and he struck time after time in the joint of the planks. They cracked. Suddenly the crowbar went halfway in through a splintered oblong hole. It must have missed Jimmy's head by less than an inch. Archie withdrew it quickly, and that infamous nigger rushed at the hole, put his lips to it, and whispered ‘Help’ in an almost extinct voice;he pressed his head to it, trying madly to get out through that opening one inch wide and three inches long. In our disturbed state we were absolutely paralysed by his incredible action. It seemed impossible to drive him away.
Even Archie at last lost his composure. ‘If ye don't clear oot I'll drive the crowbar thro' your head.’ he shouted in a determined voice. He meant what he said, and his earnestness seemed to make an impression on Jimmy. He disappeared suddenly, and we set to prising and tearing at the planks with the eagerness of men trying to get at a mortal enemy, and spurred by the desire to tear him limb from limb. The wood split, cracked, gave way. Belfast plunged in head and shoulders and groped viciously. ‘I've got 'im! Got 'im,’ he shouted. ‘Oh! There!....He's gone; ;I've got 'im!....Pull at my legs!....Pull!’ Wamibo hooted unceasingly. The boatswain shouted directions: -- ‘Catch hold of his hair, Belfast; pull straight up, you two!.... Pull fair!’We pulled fair. We pulled Belfast out with a jerk, and dropped him with disgust. In a sitting posture, purple-faced, he sobbed despairingly: --‘How can I hold on to 'is blooming short wool?’Page 52
Suddenly Jimmy's head and shoulders appeared. He stuck half-way, and with rolling eyes foamed at our feet. We flew at him with brutal impatience, we tore the shirt off his back, we tugged at his ears, we panted over him;and all at once he came away in our hands as though somebody had let go his legs. With the same movement, without a pause, we swung him up. His breath whistled, he kicked our upturned faces, he grasped two pairs of arms above his head, and he squirmed up with such precipitation that he seemed positively to escape from our hands like a bladder full of gas.
Streaming with perspiration, we swarmed up the rope, and, coming into the blast of cold wind, gasped like men plunged into icy water. With burning faces we shivered to the very marrow of our bones. Never before had the gale seemed to us more furious, the sea more mad, the sunshine more merciless and mocking, and the position of the ship more hopeless and appalling.
Every movement of her was ominous of the end of her agony and of the beginning of ours. We staggered away from the door, and, alarmed by a sudden roll, fell down in a bunch. it appeared to us that the side of the house was more smooth than glass and more slippery than ice. There was nothing to hang on to but a long brass hook used sometimes to keep back an open door.
Wamibo held on to it and we held on to Wamibo, clutching our Jimmy. He had completely collapsed now. He did not seem to have the strength to close his hand. We stuck to him blindly in our fear. We were not afraid of Wamibo letting go (we remembered that the brute was stronger than any three men in the ship), but we were afraid of the hook giving way, and we also believed that the ship had made up her mind to turn over at last. But she didn't.
A sea swept over us. The boatswain spluttered: -- ‘Up and away.
There's a lull. Away aft with you, or we will all go to the devil here.’We stood up surrounding Jimmy. We begged him to h old up, to hold on, at least. He glared with his bulging eyes, mute as a fish, and with all the stiffness knocked out of him. He wouldn't stand; he wouldn't even as much as clutch at our necks; he was only a cold black skin loosely stuffed with soft cotton wool; his arms and legs swung jointless and pliable; his head rolled about; the lower lip hung down, enormous and heavy. We pressed round him, bothered Page 53and dismayed; sheltering him we swung here and there in a body; and on the very brink of eternity we tottered all together with concealing and absurd gestures, like a lot of drunken men embarrassed with a stolen corpse.
