Carleton ran to the end of the platform, ready to leap. Sanford ordered him back. Two of the men, in the uncertainty of the moment, slackened their hold. A third, a newcomer, turned to run towards the concrete, as the safer place, when Caleb’s viselike hand grasped his shoulder and threw him back in line. There was but one chance left,—to steady the imperiled derrick with a temporary guy strong enough to stand the strain. “Stand by on that watch-tackle, every —— —— man o’ ye! Don’t one o’ ye move!” shouted Captain Joe in a voice that drowned all other sounds. The men sprang into line and stood together in dogged determination. “Take a man, Caleb, as quick’s God’ll let ye, an’ run a wire guy out on that derrick.” The order was given in a low voice that showed the gravity of the situation. Caleb and Lonny Bowles stepped from the line, leaped over the slippery rocks, splashed across the concrete disk, now a shallow lake with the rising tide, and picked up another tackle as they plunged along to where Sanford stood, the water over his rubber boots. They dragged a new guy towards the imperiled derrick. Lonny Bowles, in his eagerness to catch the dangling end of the parted guy, began to scale the derrick-mast itself, climbing by the foot-rests, when Captain Joe’s crescendo voice overhauled him. He knew the danger better than Bowles. “Come down out’er that, Lonny!” (Gentle oaths.) “Come down, I tell ye!” (Oaths crescendo.) “Don’t ye know no better’n to”—(Oaths fortissimo.) “Do ye want to pull that derrick clean over?” (Oaths fortissimisso.) Bowles slid from the mast just as Sanford’s warning cry scattered the men below him. There came a sudden jerk; the opposite derrick trembled, staggered for a moment, and swooped through the air towards the men, dragging in its fall the two side derricks with all their chains and guys. “Down between the rocks, heads under, every man o’ ye!” shouted the captain. The captain sprang last, crouching up to his neck in the sea, his head below the jagged points of two rough stones, just as the huge fourth derrick, under which he had stood, lunged wildly, and with a ringing blow struck a stone within three feet of his head,—the great anchor-chain guy twisting like a cobra over the slimy rocks. When all was still, Sanford’s anxious face rose cautiously from behind a protecting rock near where the first derrick had struck. There came a cheer of safety from Caleb and Bowles, answered by another from Captain Joe, and Sanford and the men crawled out of their holes, and clambered upon the rocks, the water dripping from their clothing. Not a man had been hurt! “What did I tell you?” called out Carleton sneeringly, more to hide his alarm than anything else.