Bertie turned away, feeling sick, yet silently agreeing.  Who could hope to pass unharmed through that raging darkness, that tossing nightmare of great waters?  Yet the thought of those three lives beating outward in agony and terror while he and his friends stood helplessly by took him by the throat.

Suddenly through a lull of the tempest there came a great shout.

The clouds had drifted asunder and a few stars shone vaguely down on the wild scene.  The dim light showed the doomed vessel wedged among the rocks that stuck up, black and threatening, through the racing foam.

Nearer at hand, huddled on the stout sea-wall, stood the little group of watchers, their faces all turned outwards towards the two masts of the little schooner, which remained faintly discernible through the shifting gloom.

It was not more than a hundred yards away, Bertie realised.  Yet the impossibility of rescue was as apparent as if it had been a hundred miles from land.  He fancied he could see a couple of figures half-way up one of the masts, but the light was elusive.  He could not be certain of this.

Suddenly a hand gripped his elbow, and he found Archie Croft beside him, yelling excitedly.

“Don’t let him go!” he bawled.  “It’s madness—­sheer madness!”

Bertie turned sharply.  Close to him, his head bare, and clothed still in evening dress, stood Charlie Cleveland.  A coil of rope lay at his feet.  He had knotted one end firmly round his body.

“Listen, you fellows!” he cried.  “I’m going to have a shot at it.  Pay out the rope as I go.  Count up to five hundred, and if it is limp, pull it in again.  If it holds, make it fast!  Got me?”

He turned at once to a flight of iron steps that led off the wall down into the awful, seething water.  But someone, Fisher, sprang suddenly after him and held him back.  Charlie wheeled instantly.  The light of a lantern striking on his face revealed it, unafraid, even laughing.

“You silly ass!” he cried.  “Hang on to the rope instead of behaving like a fellow’s grandmother!”

“You shan’t do it!” Fisher said, holding him fast.  “It is certain death!”

“All right,” Charlie yelled back.  “I choose death, then.  I prefer it to sitting still and seeing others die.  My life is my own.  I choose to risk it.”

He looked at Fisher closely for a moment, then, with one immense effort, he wrenched himself away.  He went leaping down the steps as a boy going for a summer-morning dip.

Fisher turned round and met Bertie Richmond hurrying to help him.

“Let him go!” Fisher said briefly.

Thereafter came a terrible interval of waiting.  The sky was clearing, but the tempest did not abate.  The rope ran out with jerks and pauses.  Fisher stood and counted at the head of the steps, his eyes on the tumult that had swallowed up the slight active figure of the one man among them all who had elected to risk his life against those overwhelming odds.