“Save me! Save me!” he groaned. “I’m all in! I guess my right leg is broke.”
In that pitching and tossing sea, it was no easy matter to haul the injured sailor on to the wreckage. Twice he almost slipped from Jack’s grasp, but finally he came up, and with Jack’s aid crawled to the middle of the improvised raft.
“You done me a big service, lad. I’ll never forgit it,” mumbled Ira Small, and then he all but fainted away.
“Gee, it’s too bad if his leg is broken,” remarked Fred. “And we can’t do anything for him, either.”
“I guess he was about all in when he reached the raft,” returned Jack. “Another minute, and he would have gone down.”
Now that they had found one of their companions, the two boys looked around more eagerly than ever for the others. Time and again they called out, and once they thought they heard a cry in return; but from whence it came they could not determine, and soon the whistling wind drowned out every other sound.
After the rescue of Ira Small several hours went by—hours that the boys never forgot. The rude raft pitched and tossed as before, and while the rain stopped, the wind blew as fiercely as ever, showering them continually with the ocean spray. Occasionally some small bits of wreckage hit that upon which they rested, and once a small spar rolled up on the raft, hitting Jack in the foot.
“Some vessel must have gone to pieces either in this storm or the storm we had before,” remarked Jack.
“I hope some of the others got hold of the wreckage.”