"There bes rum an' a mug, Pat. Help yerself an' then rouse the men," he
said. "Tell Nick Terry an' Bill Brennen to get the gear together. Step
lively! Rouse 'em out!"

Pat Lynch slopped rum into a tin mug, gulped it greedily, and stumbled
from the candle-light out again to the choking fog. He would have liked
to remain inside long enough to swallow another drain and fill and light
his pipe; but with Black Dennis Nolan roaring at him like a walrus, he
had not ventured to delay. He groped his way from cabin to cabin,
kicking on doors and bellowing the skipper's orders.

An hour and a half later, twenty men of Chance Along were clustered at
the edge of the broken cliff overlooking the beach of Nolan's Cove and
the rock-scarred sea beyond. But they could see nothing of beach or
tide. The fog clung around them like black and sodden curtains. Here and
there a lantern made an orange blur against the black. Some of the men
held coils of rope with light grappling-irons spliced to the free ends.
Others had home-made boat-hooks, the poles of which were fully ten feet
long.

They heard the dull boom of a gun to seaward.

"She bes closer in!" exclaimed Pat Lynch. "Aye, closer in nor when I
first heared her. She bain't so far to the south'ard, neither."

"Sure, then, the tide bes a-pullin' on her an' will drag her in, lads,"
remarked an old man, with a white beard that reached half-way down his
breast.

"What d'ye make o' her, Barney Keen?" asked the skipper of the old man.