"And you're the ship's doctor?"
"Yes. Unless we meet one of your own country's ships you'll be ashore in Denmark before noon today. But the sea is so rough that I do not believe we could transfer you, even if we met one of your own craft."
"Denmark isn't such a bad country," Dave laughed, pleasantly. "I've been there. And you're mighty quick people. It didn't take you long to rope and haul me on board."
"Because our second officer had a man in his watch who used to be a cowboy in your country, and he can handle a lariat well. Travelling through these dangerous waters we always carry a line forward with a noose at one end. You're the third man we've roped out of the water in six months."
"But what was that first line that was thrown overboard—I mean the one I grabbed and held on to?"
"There was a bucket at the end of that rope," the ship's surgeon informed Dave. "The deck-hose is out of order, and a sailor threw the bucket over to haul up water with which to wash down the passageway."
"I'm thankful he made the cast just at that instant," Dave murmured.
"Providence must have directed the cast," replied the doctor. "And it wasn't your time to die."
"I've no right to die, if I can possibly prevent it!" Dave rejoined warmly. "I'm only a small-fry officer, to be sure, but even at that I'm needed, like every other trained American officer, until Germany has been taught the great lesson of law and morality."
"Amen to that!" agreed the doctor, fervently.