One’s thoughts move with lightning-like rapidity in moments of emergency, and as I saw the boy going I thought, “Kennedy is no good; those heavy sea boots of his would drag him down and sink him in a few seconds; I must go myself!” And as the thought flashed through my brain I tore off my oilskin jacket and, shouting to Kennedy, “Lifebuoy—bend to signal halyards!” made a dash for the rail, while Mrs Vansittart’s shrieks lent wings to my feet.
As I reached the rail the ship topped the surge, which went rushing and roaring away beneath her and to leeward in a tremendous boil of foam, in the rear of which there was a space of almost glass-smooth indigo-coloured water, down through which I thought I saw something that might be the boy’s body. Without hesitating an instant I vaulted the rail, landing upon the curved turtle-back outboard, flung my hands above my head, and plunged straight for the spot where, a moment before, I thought I had seen the lad’s body.
I went deep, kicking and striking out vigorously as I felt the water close about me, for the thought occurred to me that if the boy had really hurt himself badly when colliding with the rail, he would probably not rise to the surface at all, but would slowly sink. As I forced my way downward I looked about me, and presently saw a glimmering white something far below which might be the object of my quest, for the boy was dressed entirely in white. Desperately I urged myself downward, the gloom increasing with every stroke; and at length, when I felt as though my lungs would burst and I could not retain my breath another second, I grabbed something, I scarcely knew what, and turning, struck upward toward the blue glimmer of light far overhead.
How I managed to hold my breath during that seemingly endless climb to the surface I cannot say, but I did it somehow, my head emerging from the water at the very instant when the air escaped from my lungs in one long gasp. I quickly filled them again, looked to see what I had brought to the surface with me, and found that, as I expected, it was the apparently lifeless form of Master Julius. I had grabbed the lad by his ankle, so that he hung head downward in my grasp. That would never do; so, treading water vigorously, I shifted the position of the body until I had the head resting upon my shoulder; and at that moment I felt myself being hove up, up, up, and the next instant a very mountain of water went hissing and roaring over my head, plunging me helplessly hither and thither and momentarily threatening to tear my prize from my hold.
As soon as I had again got my breath, I looked round for the yacht. She was nowhere in sight; but presently, as I began to wonder what had become of her, I saw her topmast-heads swing into view beyond the head of the comber that had just swept past me, and then up she swept until the whole of her hull was visible. I saw a crowd of people gathered aft by the taffrail, and others in the rigging, all peering out under the sharp of their hands in various directions. Then, as the craft surmounted the grey-back and came sliding down its weather slope, rolling to windward until I could see nearly half her main-deck, one of the figures suddenly pointed toward me, and in an instant every face turned my way, while one man, whom I presently recognised as Kennedy, put one hand to the side of his mouth, as though shouting, while he pointed with the other.
Not a word could I hear, however, for my ears were still full of water, while such sound as entered them was merely the hiss and roar of the sea. But I guessed what the mate was pointing at, the more readily as I saw one man paying out a thin line over the rail; so I looked eagerly about me, and presently saw, some thirty fathoms away, a white lifebuoy floating in the midst of a wide surface of foam, the ship at this time being perhaps twice as far from me as the lifebuoy. But just as I started to strike out for the buoy, another heavy sea swept over me, treating me pretty much as the first had done, and all but suffocating me into the bargain.
I thought that, hampered as I was with the boy’s inert body, I should never reach the buoy, for I seemed utterly unable to make so much as an inch of progress in that frightful sea; and once, after I had been overwhelmed about a dozen times, the thought came to me that if I wanted to save myself I must give up the idea of saving the body, which after all would be a useless task, since I felt certain that the lad was dead. But no; I could not return to the ship and face the lad’s mother empty-handed. I could picture her despair under such circumstances, for Julius was Mrs Vansittart’s only son, and, spoiled as he was, I believed that she loved him more than her husband, more than her daughter, more than her own life. No, it was not to be thought of; I had undertaken the task and I must execute it. I had raised her hopes, and I would not disappoint them if God would only give me strength to reach that buoy.
At length, after what seemed like a century of effort, I did reach it, and, laying my hand upon its nearest rim, tilted it over my head and under my armpits, at the very moment—as I afterward learned—when those aboard had paid out four sets of signal halyards to the bare end of the fourth set!
And now came the delicate and difficult task of hauling me alongside in the shortest possible space of time, without parting the halyards on the one hand or drowning me on the other. But Kennedy was the man for the job. Even as I vaulted the rail and plunged into the water his active mind, aided by past experience, had enabled him not only to grasp the full import of my hasty words concerning the lifebuoy and the signal halyards, but also to foresee exactly what must inevitably happen. And while he was in the very act of unreeving the peak ensign halyards, preparatory to bending them on to the lifebuoy which his ready knife had slashed off the taffrail, he was shouting for somebody to pass the word for Mackenzie, the engineer.
When Mac, already issuing from his cabin to learn what all the sudden outcry was about, received the message and came rushing aft in response to the call, he in turn was fully prepared for the order which Kennedy gave him, to go below and set his engine going dead easy astern. Thus by the time that I reached and got into the buoy, the ship’s way through the water was stopped, and, highly dangerous though such a proceeding undoubtedly was, under the circumstances, they were able to haul me gradually alongside and up under the counter without mishap, the engine of course being stopped again at the right moment. And when once they had got me under the lee quarter of the ship all the rest was of course comparatively easy. Two of the hands standing by hove me a couple of standing bowlines on ropes’ ends, one of which I slipped over the inanimate Julius’s head and under his armpits; and when I saw that they had got the body safely in over the rail I slipped into the other myself, and was hauled aboard amid the triumphant yells of the crew—to swoon as my feet touched the deck.