So perhaps they had another hour or two of life before them. Perhaps. Another wave, cascading green over Pretty Jane’s upturned side, brought a grim warning that it might not be as long as that. And amid the rumble and the roar of the bursting wave, even as he hung on desperately, he was conscious of a succession of other sounds, harder and sharper, and of a jarring of the deck under his feet. The deckhouse! It was lifting on its bolts under the impact of the water. It could not be expected to stand that battering long; it was bound to be swept away, soon. And – Hornblower’s visual imagination was feverishly at work – before then its seams would be forced apart, it would fill with water. Barbara would be drowned inside it before the weight of water within tore the deckhouse from its bolts, for the waves to hurl it overside with Barbara’s drowned body inside. Clinging to the binnacle Hornblower went through some seconds of mental agony, the worst he had ever known in his life. There had been times and times before when he had faced death for himself, when he had weighed chances, when he had staked his own life, but now it was Barbara’s life that he was staking.
To leave her in the deckhouse meant her certain death soon. The alternative was to bring her out upon the wave-swept deck. Here, tied to the mast, she would live as long as she could endure the buffeting and the exposure, until the Pretty Jane broke up into fragments, possibly. For himself he had played out a losing game to the bitter end more than once; now he had to brace himself to do the same for Barbara. He made the decision. On Barbara’s behalf he decided to struggle on as long as was possible. Forcing himself to think logically while the stupefying wind roared round him, he made his plans. He awaited a comparatively calm moment, and then made the perilous brief journey to the foot of the mainmast. Now he worked with frantic rapidity. Two lengths of the main-topsail halliards; he had to keep his head clear to prevent his fumbling fingers from entangling them. Then two desperate journeys, first to the wheel, and then to the deckhouse. He tore open the door and stumbled in over the coaming, the lines in his hands. There were two feet of water in the deckhouse, surging about with the motion of the ship, Barbara was there; he saw her in the light from the door. She had wedged herself as well as she might in her bunk.
“Dearest!” he said. Within the deckhouse it was just possible to be heard, despite the frantic din all round.
“I’m here, dear,” she replied.
Another wave burst over the Pretty Jane at that moment; water came pouring in through the gaping seams of the deckhouse and he could feel the whole thing lift again on its bolts and he knew a moment of wild despair at the thought that he might already be too late, that the deckhouse was going to be swept away at this moment with them in it. But it held – the surge of the water as Pretty Jane lay over the other way flung Hornblower against the other bulkhead.
“I must get you out of here, dear,” said Hornblower, trying to keep his voice steady. “You’ll be safer tied to the mainmast.”
“As you wish, of course, dear,” said Barbara, calmly.
“I’m going to put these lines round you,” said Hornblower.
Barbara had managed to dress herself in his absence; at any rate she had some sort of dress or petticoat on. Hornblower made fast the lines about her while the ship rolled and swayed under their feet; she held her arms up for him to do so. He knotted the lines round her waist, below her tender bosom.
“Listen carefully,” said Hornblower, and he told her, while they were still in the comparative calm of the deckhouse, what he wanted her to do, how she had to watch her chance, rush to the wheel, and from there to the mainmast.
“I understand, dear,” said Barbara. “Kiss me once more, my very dearest.”