He did not look at George.
He felt sure in his own mind that the wedges and rings would hold; but to make doubly sure he gave orders to loop an extra chain under the jutting base of the boulder.

The mason who fixed it, standing waist-high in water as the tide ebbed, called for a rope and hitched it round the ankle of the dead man.

The dead man's brother jumped down beside him and grasped the slack of it.
At a signal from Taffy the crowd began to light their torches.
He looked at his watch, at the tide, and gave the word to man the windlasses.

Then with a glance towards the cliff he started the working chant--"_Ayee-ho, Ayee-ho!_" The two gangs--twenty men to each windlass--took it up with one voice, and to the deep intoned chant the chains tautened, shuddered for a moment, and began to lift.
"_Ayee-ho!_" Silently, irresistibly, the chain drew the rock from its bed.
To Taffy it seemed an endless time, to the crowd but a few moments before the brute mass swung clear.

A few thrust their torches down towards the pit where the sailor knelt.