expecting that it was to fasten round the grapnel so as to pull in a fresh direction.
As soon as I had done he took hold of the loop that was round the stone, drew a long breath, and asked me to lift it over into the water.
This I did, and he went down head-first, while I again watched him below among the waving weeds all indistinct in the troubled sea.
He was down for a full minute as I crouched there with my head over the side. He seemed to be so long that I began to grow alarmed lest he had become entangled, and I was about to haul up the line attached to the stone. I looked down anxiously with my face closer to the surface, but only to make him out in a bleared indistinct manner, and then he shot up like a line of light and swam to the side and held on.
“Thought I shouldn’t be able to do it,” he said; “but I’ve got the line round.”
“Well, what next?” I said. “But I say, is a grapnel worth all this trouble?”
“A grapnel?” he said with a peculiar smile.
“Yes.”
“Wait a minute till I am in the boat.”
He climbed in, and came to my side.