The Doctor, who would rather have taken the water-hazard himself, passed over the boat-hook.
Bill jumped from pan to pan, nimble as a goat. Fortune seemed to be favoring the brave. His leaps would have broken records at a track-meet. Sometimes he put out the boat-hook after the manner of a pole-vaulter, and flung himself with its aid across a terrifying chasm.
But as Grenfell watched and waited in suspense, all of a sudden, to his acute dismay, he saw the pole slip from his comrade's grasp.
Bill staggered on the edge of a pan, and gave a desperate wrench of the body to save himself from falling. In vain. In another instant he was struggling in the waves. In a moment more the pans might crush him, or he might be so benumbed that he could make no further effort to help himself.
While the Doctor stood there in mental anguish because he could do nothing to help his comrade, he saw Bill with a desperate effort throw a burly leg over the edge of the pan and scramble out, seemingly none the worse for the ducking.
All Bill could do now was to stand on his pan and let the wind and the sea take him where they would.
Grenfell kept on shooting, but there was no response from the shore.
Bill's pan crept nearer and nearer to the Doctor's—but not near enough to let Bill get back.
At last the shooting was answered.
They saw the flash of an oar—always the first signal of rescue under these conditions—and a boat hove in sight.