But his powerful voice was drowned by the incessant roar of the breakers; not even the united clamor of every man present, fifteen all told, including the drunken chief officer, could make itself heard above the din. Then Hozier tugged sharply at the rope three times, and it grew taut. Amid a jubilant cry from the others, he and Iris were lifted clear of the deck. At once they were carried fully twenty feet to seaward. As they swung back, not quite so far, and now well above the level of the windlass from which their perilous journey had started, a ready-witted sailor seized a few coils of a thin rope that lay tucked up in the angle of the bulwarks, and flung them across Hozier's arms. "Take a whip with you, sir!" he yelled, and Philip showed that he understood by gripping the rope between his teeth. It was obvious that the rescuers were working from a point well overhanging the recess into which the _Andromeda_ had driven her bows, and there might still be the utmost difficulty in throwing a rope accurately from the rock to the wreck. As a matter of fact, no less than six previous attempts had been made, and the success of the seventh was due solely to a favorable gust of wind hurtling into the cleft at the very instant it was needed. The sailor's quick thought solved this problem for the future. By tying the small rope to the heavier one, those who remained below could haul it back when some sort of signal code was established. At present, all they could do was to pay out the whip, and take care that it did not interfere with Hozier's ascent. They soon lost sight of him and the girl, for the spray and froth overhead formed an impenetrable canopy, but they reasoned that the distance to be traveled could not be great; otherwise the throwing of a rope would have been a physical impossibility in the first instance. Once there was a check. They waited anxiously, but there was no sign given by the frail rope that they were to haul in again. Then the upward movement continued. "Chunk o' rock in the way," announced Coke, glaring round at the survivors as if to challenge contradiction. No one answered. These men were beginning to measure their lives against the life of the wedge of iron and timber kept in position by the crumbling frame of the ship. It was a fast-diminishing scale. The figures painted on the _Andromeda's_ bows represented minutes rather than feet. Watts was lying crouched on deck, with his arms thrown round the windlass. Looking ever for a fresh incursion of rats, he seemed to be cheered by the fact that his dreaded assailants preferred the interior of the forecastle to the wave-swept deck. He was the only man there who had no fear of death. Suddenly he began to croon a long-forgotten sailor's chanty. Perhaps, in some dim way, a notion of his true predicament had dawned on him, for there was a sinister purport to the verse.