“Mr. Redfox, I tell you plainly it’s a foolhardy game you are playing with that boy,” said the helmsman earnestly.  “If anything happens to him you’ll answer for it on a charge of criminal carelessness at the first port we put into.”

“Wait till you get a chance,” growled the officer to Green; to Willy he said, “Go on up.”

Willy crossed himself, then swung himself without fear up on the rope ladder leading from the side of the vessel to the crow’s nest.  Right after him followed Redfox.  With anger and fear Green watched how the wind blew Willy’s blonde hair and the officer’s red beard; for a moment the two disappeared behind the sails, then they appeared scaling the topmost ladder.  The wind had increased; the vessel tipped still more to the side.  Willy clambered on courageously higher and higher up, but the real danger was yet to come.

“Now see, he is astride the yard sliding out fully twelve feet from the main mast—­now he is loosening the rope by which the top-sail is fastened to the arm!  Redfox ought to do that himself,” said the helmsman to himself.  “But no, he forces the boy before him out on the yard, orders him to stand up and unfasten the rope.  The inhuman wretch!—­That means the boy’s death.  It is no easy task even for an experienced seaman.  And he is not even holding him by the belt, only by the bottom part of his jacket.——­Now he is holding him tighter.  There——­O holy Mother of God the boy is falling!” Green closed his eyes for a moment and gasped.  “No, he is sliding along the yard.  Hold fast, Willy, hold fast for two or three minutes.  I’ll come to help you.”

He threw the rope over the wheel and ran like a cat up the rigging.  Willy, in utmost danger of falling, was sliding and swinging along between the sails of the fore and mainmast, every moment expecting that his strength would give out and that he would fall on the planks of the deck below or into the sea.

“Holy guardian angel,” he cried, “take me; I cannot hold on any longer!” Everything swam before his eyes, and in a moment he would have fallen, if the helmsman had not, almost miraculously reached him and seized him in his arms.  He carried him down to the deck and laid him in a dead faint on a pile of rope, and began working over him.  Before Redfox came down from the rigging Willy had recovered.  “You see,” he said to Green, “my holy guardian angel did not leave me.”

“Indeed, Master Willy, you speak the truth, for without the help of your guardian angel I should not have been able to save you,” affirmed Green, wiping drops of cold sweat from his forehead.  Then he thundered at Redfox: 

“Thank God, that you lay yourself down to rest tonight without a murder on your conscience.  It is no fault of yours that that boy came down from the rigging alive.”

“I forbid any such talk,” answered Redfox without meeting the gaze of the helmsman.  “The stupid youngster got dizzy when I let go of his jacket and started to get a better hold of his belt.”