The temptation was strong upon the oarsmen to turn their heads and look, but they knew that such an action might result in the swamping of the boat, and kept steadily at their work.
All at once a blinding glare of light enveloped them, and then swept on. It was the destroyer’s searchlight.
“Woof!” exclaimed Herc, “I never knew those seas were so big till that light showed them up.”
Viewed in the bright electric bath of the searchlight, the waves did, indeed, look formidable. Black and huge, they reared up on every side of the tiny boat. Their tops were torn off by the furious wind in sheets of ragged foam. The spume thus formed drenched the boat in clouds.
Suddenly the middy at the stern oar swung the boat right around to port and, hauling his oar inboard, rapidly crawled forward.
“I see him, boys,” he shouted, grasping a line and leaning far out over the bow. “Stand by for orders.”
“Peak oars!”
Round came the boat’s head, the faces of its occupants now flooded with light from the destroyer’s searchlight.
“All right, my man, I’ve got you!” exclaimed the young officer, as he reached overboard for the patent buoy, to which hung a bedraggled, almost exhausted figure.
But at the same instant he uttered a shout of alarm, and before the horrified eyes of his startled crew he lost his balance and toppled over the bow into the raging sea.