"After the boy left me," he said, "I saw it wouldn't do any good to tackle 'em at once, there bein' no way of gettin' at 'em from the shore side. If I let 'em know they were watched, they would be off, sure, an' what I wanted was to find some way to head 'em off. I knew if you came down the beach after 'em they'd have the start, an' you can't always depend on shootin' straight at night in a fog."
"What did you do, then?" asked the agent.
"I just slipped into the water, down by the
end o' the causeway," the old whaler said, "an' there were scores o' seals around, so that it didn't matter how much I splashed."
"You must be half a seal yourself," the agent said. "Swimming among rocks in the dark is no joke."
"I had plenty of time, and I can swim a little," the old man modestly admitted. "Wa'al, pretty soon I saw the boat an' I swam under water till I came up right behind it. The Jap what was sittin' in it wasn't expectin' any trouble an' as he was nid-noddin' and half asleep, I put one hand on the stern o' the boat, bringin' it down in the water. With the other hand I grabbed the back of a blouse-thing he was wearin' an' yanked him overboard."
"You didn't drown him, did you, Hank?" asked Colin.
"Not altogether," the old whaler answered. "I held him under, though, until he was good an' full o' water an' had stopped kickin', an' then I climbed into the boat. Next time he came up I grabbed him an' took him aboard. The fog was pretty thick an' none o' the rest of 'em saw what was goin' on. In a minute or two I could see he was beginnin' to come round an' I didn't
quite know what to do. I didn't want to knock him on the head, he hadn't done anythin' to hurt me, an' so I dropped the row-locks overboard, tossed the oars ashore—there they are, lyin' among the seals—an' got ashore myself. As soon as I was on solid ground I untied the painter what held the boat an' set it adrift, givin' it a push off with one o' the oars. The tide's goin' out, so I knew he couldn't get ashore again. I'd hardly got the boat shoved off when he yelled an' the rest of 'em heard it."
"What did they do?"