A drenching sea followed, as the
boat lost headway, and Rasmunsen sprang to the bailing bucket
Several boats hurtled past them in the next half-hour,--small
boats, boats of their own size, boats afraid, unable to do aught
but run madly on. Then a ten-ton barge, at imminent risk of
destruction, lowered sail to windward and lumbered down upon them.
"Keep off! Keep off!" Rasmunsen screamed.
But his low gunwale ground against the heavy craft, and the
remaining correspondent clambered aboard. Rasmunsen was over the
eggs like a cat and in the bow of the Alma, striving with numb
fingers to bend the hauling-lines together.
"Come on!" a red-whiskered man yelled at him.
"I've a thousand dozen eggs here," he shouted back. "Gimme a tow!
I'll pay you!"
"Come on!" they howled in chorus.
A big whitecap broke just beyond, washing over the barge and
leaving the Alma half swamped. The men cast off, cursing him as
they ran up their sail. Rasmunsen cursed back and fell to bailing.
The mast and sail, like a sea anchor, still fast by the halyards,
held the boat head on to wind and sea and gave him a chance to
fight the water out.
Three hours later, numbed, exhausted, blathering like a lunatic,
but still bailing, he went ashore on an ice-strewn beach near
Cariboo Crossing.
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