"Ooop!" spluttered Peter from the water.
The rest was child's play compared to what had preceded it. The carving afforded toe-holds in plenty, and soon I had a leg over the windowsill and looked down at Peter trailing in the James' wake as he clung to the shelf which crossed the stern perhaps a foot above the water. He dared no longer hold to the rudder.
His big face was so white that it frightened me, and I tumbled inboard without stopping to make sure the cabin was empty. But my luck was with me, and I scurried around to find a rope. This was a hopeless quest in that luxurious apartment, so I ran up the companionway and just inside the door to the deck came upon a lead line, coiled and hung to a hook, which I appropriated.
Altogether these movements consumed less time than is required to describe them; but when I returned to the stern windows Peter was gone. I leaned out and stared back at the James' creaming wake—and a white arm flashed in a gesture of appeal twenty feet astern. I cast the lead behind him, and he caught the line as it settled into the water, cut the lead free with the dead man's knife at his belt, looped the slack under his shoulders, and with my feverish help hauled himself back to the shelf above the water line.
I lacked the strength to draw him up; but I fastened my end of the line to the cabin table, which was bolted to the floor, and then, foot by foot, Peter toiled upward. He was so weary at the last that I must pull him through the window, and he fell in a heap across the table, puddling the polished surface with the sea-water that streamed off him and the blood from his scarred hands.
A bottle of the aqua vitae my great-uncle favored stood by his place, and I took this and poured a liberal tot between Peter's lips. He staggered to his feet, blinking his eyes and red as a school miss.
"All right, Bob," he squeaked. "I be all right, ja."
His eyes chanced upon the lead-line, still fast to the table's leg, and he stooped and unknotted it and dropped it out of the window.
"We better not stay here," he muttered. "Neen! If Murray sees us——"
"Oh, my Gawd!"