Broncho, hanging in the fore-rigging, gave his chum up for lost.
"He's shore due to cash in this time," he muttered sadly. "Even if we-alls go clear o' that ship, he'll come through the racket a drowned cawpse. Poor old Jack, standin' thar game as hornets, no more fretted than if he's coolly sittin' down to a poker game."
Jack gave one last look astern at the approaching sea, and then a keen glance at the hove-to Scotchman.
"We'll do it by the skin of our teeth," he murmured, as he put the helm up a few spokes to steady her as she went.
And now the mountain of water was upon him. Catching the Higgins on her starboard quarter, it hit the mizzen-mast half way up to the crossjack yard, and with a fearful din went raging over everything.
It washed over the poop until the spanker boom was hidden; the two quarter-boats were smashed into staves, and there was a crash of splintered glass as the windows of the afterhouse went in.
Jack wondered, as it fell upon him, whether the terrific force of the comber would not tear the wheel up and carry it with himself overboard.
But the stout wheel held, and Jack was crushed furiously against it until all the wind was beaten out of his body, and his ribs almost stove into his lungs.
Still he kept his senses, and never lost his presence of mind. Grimly he grasped the spokes and waited for the end, wondering how long he could live under water without becoming unconscious.
A hideous pain in his chest gradually overcame his will-power, and caused a drowsiness in his brain, which echoed one word again and again.