While they looked, a venomous wave got under the bow and lifted it
high. Then down it went as a man would crash his palms together,
bursting out the forepeak like a rotten apple. Thus weakened forward,
the loss of the foremast was an imminent certainty. And there were two
men in the fore rigging! Captain Ephraim leaned far out from the
mainmast; the tug men could see him plainly as he pointed at the
tottering mast and then at the deck.

"He wants them to leave the mast and go into the mainmast," cried
Mulhatton.

"But they won't--see, they are shaking their heads 'no,'" shouted Dan.
"They couldn't; the breakers would sweep them away in a minute."

"Look!"

For man is brave and man does fight, even in the face of injustice, in
the face of odds. Thus did Martin Loughran, in the fore rigging of the
_Zeitgeist_, as with set jaws he struggled upward toward the stump of
the topmast. Between the trucks of the fore and maintopmasts ran a
horizontal line of wire. It is called the "triatic stay," and Loughran
was climbing to it. Dan--all the _Fledgling's_ crew and the crew of
the _Sovereign_--foresaw his intention, and stentorian shouts, "You
can't do it!" bounded over the water. But the sailor did not pause,
if, indeed, he heard their warnings.

Slowly, laboriously he climbed. He stretched up one hand and grasped
the stay. Up went the other hand. Then out against the glooming sky
was limned the swaying form, working its way along the triatic stay