In a twinkling the squall was on them in all its fury, sending the sloop headlong into the foam. The boys could see nothing and held their breath in awful suspense. Hockley fairly shivered with terror, but none of the others noted this, being too busy caring for their own safety.
As the sloop veered around, the boiling foam mounted to the forward deck and Sam was caught as in the breakers of the ocean. He was clinging to a low guard, unaware that the thing was partly rotted away. Without warning came a cracking and before he realized it he was over the side.
Down and down, and still down went poor Sam, until he felt that he must be going straight to the bottom of the lake. He was so bewildered that for several seconds he scarcely knew what to do. He turned over and over and clutched out wildly, reaching nothing but the water, which, at this distance below the surface, was as calm as ever.
At last the youth struck out for the surface. He wanted to breathe but knew that if he opened his mouth and took in the water it might prove fatal to him. His head began to grow dizzy and a strange pain shot across his chest. Then he came up, opened his eyes and gave a gasp.
“I went overboard,” was his thought. “Where can the sloop be?”
He tried to call out, but his puny effort was drowned completely by the wind, which whistled as fiercely as ever. On every side of him the water boiled and foamed as before and he was thrown around like a cork, often turning over and going beneath the surface.
The next few minutes were to the boy little short of an age. He strained his eyes for some sign of the sloop but could see absolutely nothing of the vessel. He was alone on the broad bosom of Lake Maracaibo!
Alone! It was an awful thought and as it flashed over his mind he felt his heart sink like a lump of lead in his bosom. Alone! Would they come back for him, or would he be left there to drown?
“They ought to come back,” he muttered. “They must come back! Oh, God spare me!” And the prayer was repeated over and over again. It gave him strength, and he struck out as best he could, determined to keep afloat as long as possible.
All told the squall did not last over twenty minutes, but to poor Sam it seemed an age. He made scant progress through the milklike foam, but this did not matter, since he knew not in what direction he was heading.