How's the fellow out yonder ?" The man on the wreck was still clinging, drenched twice or thrice in the half-minute and hidden from sight, but always emerging.

He sat astride of the dangling foremast, and had wound tightly round his wrist the end of a rope that hung over the bows.

If the rope gave, or the mast worked clear of the tangle that held it and floated off, he was a dead man.
He hardly fought at all, and though they shouted at the top of their lungs, seemed to take no notice--only moved feebly, once or twice, to get a firmer seat.
Zeb also could only be descried at intervals, his head appearing, now and again, like a cork on the top of a billow.

But the last of the ebb was helping him, and Jim Lewarne, himself at times neck-high in the surf, continued to pay out the line slowly.

In fact, the feat was less dangerous than it seemed to the spectators.