CHAPTER XII.
JACK DISOBEYS ORDERS.
Outlined dimly in the distant gloom was the hulk of the steamer. Her whistle was shrieking hoarsely, now sounding, as the mate guessed, a recall to the rescue boat before darkness closed in.
Jack was a strong, able swimmer, but never had he received such a breath-taking buffeting as fell to his lot in that wild commotion of waters. But with grim determination he fought his way to the ship’s side. Those in the boat saw him gain a foothold on the anchor chains and scramble upward; but they could not guess what a supreme effort of nerve and muscle those last few moments cost him.
As he gained the deck he was compelled, perforce, to cast himself gasping on his face, and so he lay for a space. Then, from the gloom, came a feeble call for help. It nerved him with fresh vim. Among the tangled wreckage he scrambled till he reached the place where the two men were lashed to the bitts.
Thanks to the oil-spread waters, the seas were no longer breaking over the wreck, but the two men who had lashed themselves there to avoid being swept over the side, were too feeble to sever their ties. Jack cut them loose and signaled to the boat. It was brought as close alongside as Mr. Brown dared, and one after the other the two seamen were hauled on board. Last of all came Jack. He secured the rope to his waist as it came snaking toward him from the boat like a lasso, and then jumped outward. As he sprang, he felt the hulk drop from under his feet in a wild yaw.
At the same instant the boy felt himself being drawn under water as if in the grasp of a giant hand that he was powerless to resist. Then his senses left him in a rocketing blaze of light and a roar like that of a hundred water-falls.
When he came to, he was lying on the bottom boards of the boat. From a bottle some stimulant was being administered to him. He sat up and stared about him wildly for a moment, and then saw that they were almost alongside the heaving hull of the tanker.
But of the wreck there was no sign.
“Went to Davy Jones like a plummet,” said Mr. Brown cheerfully, “and almost took you along with her, my lad. We had a fine job hauling you aboard, I can tell you.”