“Better get them ashore like this,” he thought, with wonderful coolness considering the danger. “There’s a wave coming. I’ll copy the kroo boys and wait for it. Then I’ll try to get all three of us flung on the beach.”
He took a firm hold of the collar of the stout man, who was apparently unconscious, for his eyes were tightly closed, though his arms still retained their grip. But the hold which Dick had obtained enabled him to keep the fat stranger’s lips just clear of the water, while it also raised the other man’s face. Then Dick lifted his free arm for a second. Those ashore saw the movement and shouted, while three or four of them ran down into the sea. A wave was coming. Dick could see it in spite of the blowing spray which whisked across the water. He took a deep breath and gripped the coat with both hands. The curling crest of a green wave shut out the horizon. There was a crash in his ears. The torrent caught him and almost tore his grip from the collar. Then he felt that he was moving. He and the weight to which he clung shot towards the shore, a foot or more of water covering them. Then there was a second crash, loud shouts from those on the beach, and afterwards—
“Hullo! Does it hurt? Broke just above the elbow and we had such a job. No. Lie down, sir! You are not to move. Lie down, I say! You are safe out of the water.”
Dick collapsed flat on his back and stared indignantly at the individual who had dared to give the order. He was a trim, dapper Englishman, with a small beard, and as he returned our hero’s gaze he showed every sign of being a man who meant what he said, and would have no nonsense. He was minus his coat, and his sleeves were rolled to the shoulder.
“That’s an order,” he laughed. “Remember that, youngster. An order. See that you obey it.”
He shook his fist, laughed merrily, and proceeded to unroll his sleeves and don his coat.
They were in a large, airy room, and when Dick turned his head, he could catch, through the widely opened windows, a view of the sea, of the ship which had just reached the roads, and a small section of the sandy beach. No one was stirring. The sun was right overhead, and the shadows short and barely perceptible. The atmosphere quivered with the heat. Even the birds and the insects seemed to have succumbed. An unnatural quiet reigned over that portion of the Gold Coast, and only the surf thundered and roared. But that was partly imagination. Dick could not shake off the impression that he was even then swallowed in that huge mass of water, and that he could still hear, was deafened, indeed, by the crash of the billows. He looked again down at the sands. A solitary Fanti boy languidly sauntered across the view. There was a boat drawn up clear of the breakers, and another lay off the ship, a mile from the shore. Was it all a dream, then?
“I say,” he suddenly remarked, and he felt surprised that his voice should sound so low and weak. “Er, I say, if you please, where am I, and what has been happening?”
“Happening?” exclaimed his companion, with elevated eyebrows. “Oh, nothing at all. You acted like a madman, they tell me. You dived into the surf, and, as a result, the surf threw you back as if it objected to you. It threw you hard, too, and wet sand is heavy stuff to fall on. You’ve a broken arm, and may thank your stars that that is all. It ought, by rights, to have been a broken neck and hardly a whole bone in your body. Where are you? Why, at the Governor’s, of course. In clover, my boy.”
The jovial individual laughed as he spoke, and came close to the bed.