The boys were slung as Dick had ordered.  “Lower away steadily,” Dick said.  “Stop lowering if we yell.”

In another minute the lads were swinging in space, some ten feet out from the face of the cliff.  For the first few yards they descended steadily, and then, as the rope lengthened, the gusts of wind flung them violently against the face of the cliff.

“Fend her off with your legs, Jack; that’s the way.  By Jove, that’s a ducking!” he said, as a mighty rush of spray enveloped them as a mountainous sea struck the rock below.  “I think we shall do it.  There’s something black down below, I think some part of her still holds together; slowly!” he shouted up, in one of the pauses of the gale, and Hardy’s response of “Aye, aye, sir,” came down to them.

It was a desperate three minutes; but at the end of that time, bruised, bleeding, half-stunned by the blows, half-drowned by the sheets of water which flew over them, the lads’ feet touched the rocks.  These formed a sloping shelf of some thirty feet wide at the foot of the cliff.

The wreck which had appeared immediately under them was forty feet away, and appeared a vague, misshapen black mass.  They had been seen, for they had waved the lantern from the edge of the cliff before starting, and they had several times shouted as they descended, and as they neared the ground, they were delighted at hearing by an answering shout that their labors had not been in vain, and that some one still survived.

“Throw us a rope,” Dick shouted at the top of his voice; and in a moment they heard a rope fall close to them.  Groping about in the darkness, they found it, just as a wave burst below them, and, dashing high over their heads, drove them against the rock, and then floated them off their feet.  The rope from above held them, however.  “Lower away!” Dick yelled, as he regained his feet, and then, aided by the rope from the ship, they scrambled along, and were hauled on to the wreck before the next great sea came.

“I’ve broken my arm, Dick,” Jack said; “but never mind me now.  How many are there alive?”

There were sixteen men huddled together under the remains of the bulwark.  The greater portion of the ship was gone altogether, and only some forty feet of her stern remained high on the rocky ledge on which she had been cast.  The survivors were for the most part too exhausted to move, but those who still retained some strength and vigor at once set to work.  In pairs they were fastened in the slings, and hauled up direct from the deck of the vessel, another rope being fastened to them and held by those on the wreck, by which means they were guided and saved somewhat from being dashed against the cliff in the ascent.

When those below felt, by the rope no longer passing between their hands, that the slings had reached the top, they waited for a minute to allow those in them to be taken out, and then hauling upon the rope, pulled the slings down again for a fresh party.  So, slowly and painfully, the whole party were, two by two, taken up from the wreck.