“I’m all right now,” decided the tall lad. “I know which way to swim.”
He really thought he did, though, as it turned out later, he had mistaken the direction of the noise. And as he swam on, blissfully unconscious of the fact that he was going farther and farther away from the Sherman instead of nearer to it, another thought came to Jerry. He expressed it subconsciously:
“Why don’t I hear some whistling or some other noise from the vessel that crashed into us?”
That was it—why did he not? Once his ears had cleared, Jerry could continue to catch the sound of distant shouting, and also the periodic whistling of the Sherman—he well knew the tones of that instrument. But he did not hear any corresponding note from the other ship that had been in the collision.
“She ought to be whistling, too,” decided Jerry. “Maybe she’s damaged, and maybe some of her men have been knocked overboard as I was. She ought to be whistling.”
But on that mist-covered sea there seemed to be but one vessel in the neighborhood of the swimming lad—and that was the transport which he was vainly endeavoring to find.
Then, like a flash, one of his previous thoughts came to Jerry Hopkins.
“An iceberg can’t whistle!”
That must be it. An iceberg had been responsible for the crash, and even now was out there, somewhere, in the fog.
“Sherman ahoy!” cried Jerry desperately.