“Then you will go to the bottom, sure enough.”
“I can’t help it if I do,” said Enoch, desperately. “I will throw the yacht up into the wind before I go, and all you’ve got to do is to hold the wheel steady and keep her there till I get back—if I ever do. I say, fellows,” he added, addressing the frightened boys who were gathered around him, “I am going off in the dory after that lady, and I want one of you to go with me. Who’ll volunteer?”
The deserters were so astonished that there was no immediate response. The dory was small, the waves were high, and it looked like certain death to venture out among them. After a moment’s indecision one of them stepped forward and prepared himself for the ordeal by discarding his coat and hat and kicking off his boots. Who do you suppose it was? It was Lester Brigham. The boy who had hidden his head under the bed-clothes when he thought that the rioters were coming to attack the academy, now showed, to the surprise of everybody, that he was not a coward after all. Enoch could not have picked out an abler assistant. He was a good oarsman, he could swim like a duck, and, better than all, his courage never faltered when he found himself in the dory battling with the waves. His companions, who dared not go on so perilous a mission themselves, cheered him loudly as he stepped forward, and Enoch shook him warmly by the hand, saying in a low tone:
“We said we would give the academy boys something to talk about, and now we’re going to do it.”
The schooner ran on by the wreck, whose crew, seeing that an attempt was to be made to rescue them, cheered faintly, but made no effort to free themselves from their lashings. The reason was because they were utterly exhausted, and they were afraid that if they loosed their bonds, the first wave that broke over the sloop’s deck would carry them into the sea.
As soon as the Sylph had been thrown up into the wind, Enoch and Lester, whose faces were white but resolute, scrambled down into the dory, and the struggle began. The waves tossed their little craft about like an egg-shell, but they kept manfully on, and in ten minutes more, they were alongside the wreck. The lady, who was insensible from fright or exposure, was the first to be released and placed in the boat, and then the men were taken care of, one after the other. As Enoch approached the last one, he saw that the man carried in his arms a bundle that was wrapped up in a blanket. He held fast to it, too, in spite of the boy’s efforts to take it from him; but as Enoch assisted him toward the dory, a wave, higher than the rest, knocked them both off their feet, and as the man was hauled into the boat Enoch missed the frantic grasp he made at a life-line, and the water rushing across the deck carried him overboard. Close in front of him was the bundle which had slipped from the grasp of the rescued man when he lost his footing. As the wave hurried it across the deck toward an opening in the bulwarks the blanket fell off, revealing to Enoch’s astonished gaze the handsome features of a little four-year-old boy, who turned his blue eyes pleadingly toward him for an instant, and then disappeared over the side. Enoch made a desperate clutch at the golden curls, and when he arose to the surface, he brought his prize with him; but he had to go down again the next moment to escape destruction from the spar, which the next wave brought toward him broadside on. It had been torn from its fastenings at last, but it had done its deadly work. There was a great hole in the sloop’s side, and the water was pouring into it.
“I say, Lester!” shouted Enoch, as he came up on the other side of the spar, shook the water from his face and held the boy aloft so that he could breathe. “Get away from there.”
“Oh, my boy!” cried one of the men in the dory, who now discovered that he had lost the precious burden to which he had so lovingly clung through long hours of exposure and suffering.
“He’s all right,” shouted Enoch, encouragingly. “I’ve got a good grip on him. Lester, I tell you to get away from there! Hold the dory head on to the waves, and she’ll ride them without shipping a drop of water. If the Sylph doesn’t make stem-way enough to pick you up, the other yacht will take care of you.”
Not knowing just how much of a swirl the sloop would make when she went to the bottom, Enoch exerted all his powers as a swimmer to get himself and his burden out of reach of it. He succeeded in his object, and when the wreck had sunk out of sight and he thought it safe to do so, he swam back to the spar and laid hold of it. Then he looked around for the dory. She had been hauled alongside the Sylph by aid of the line that one of the crew had been thoughtful enough to throw to her, and the sloop’s crew were being hoisted over the rail one after the other.