But she had no eyes for anything except her husband, and no other thought than of the horrible peril in which he was placing himself. Four men clung to the bottom of the ladder, and yet, with Dale's weight half-way up to help them, could not for a moment keep it steady. On top of the rick one of the tarpaulin sheets had broken loose; the cruel wind was tearing beneath it, wrenching out pegs and cordage, snatching at thatch-hackle, and making the stout ropes that should have held the sheet hiss and dart like serpents.
It seemed to her that the rick was as high as Mont Blanc, and that even on a placid summer day no one but a lunatic would want to scale it. Then she screamed, and went rushing forward.
Dale, in the act of clambering from the top rung of the ladder, had been blown off, and was hanging to a rope over the edge of the stack. With extreme difficulty the men moved the ladder, and he succeeded in getting on it again.
"Gi't up, sir. 'Tis mortally impossible." As well as Mavis, every one of them shouted an entreaty that he would come down.
Probably he did not hear them, and certainly he did not obey them. He went up, not down. Then for half an hour he fought like a madman with the flapping sheet, and finally conquered it.
Mavis, as she stared upward, saw the gray clouds driving so fast over the crest of the stack that they made it seem as if the whole yard was drifting away in the opposite direction; while her man, a poor little black insect painfully crawling here and there, desperately writhed as new billows surged up beneath him, labored at the rope, seemed to use feet, hands, and teeth in his frantic efforts against the overwhelming power that was opposed to him. She felt dazed and giddy, sick with fear, and yet glowing with admiration in the midst of her agonized anxiety.
To the men it was a wonderful and exciting sight that had altogether stirred them from their usual turnip-like lethargy. When the master came down, all shaking and bleeding, they bellowed hearty compliments in his ear.
"Now," said the old charwoman, when Mr. and Mrs. Dale returned to the kitchen, "you've a 'aad a nice skimmle-skammle of it, sir, an' you best back me up to send the missis to her bed, and bide there warm, and never budge. I means it," she added, with authority. "You ben't to put yourself in a caddle, Mrs. Dale, an' I know what I be talkin' of."