“Look out for your life!” came in Mr. Smallwood’s voice.
Jack looked up, startled. The burning ship was a flush-decked craft. That is, her forecastle was not raised, but was on a level with the main deck where the cattle pens were. The terrified creatures, in their frenzy of fear, had broken loose from the flimsy timber structure, and now, urged on by the flames behind them, were charging down in a wild stampede upon Jack and the half-conscious form of the sick boy at his feet.
It was not possible to effect a retreat down the forecastle hatch, for his efforts to support himself on the journey up had been too much for Dick Sanders’ strength.
Jack looked about him. It was imperative to act with desperate swiftness.
Now, not fifty feet from him was the advance guard of the maddened, fear-crazed steers. In a few seconds, if he did not act swiftly, both he and the lad he had rescued would be pounded by their sharp hoofs into an unrecognizable mass.
Suddenly he formed a resolution. With desperate eagerness he stripped off his oilskins and kicked off the light deck shoes he had not thought to change in the hurry of embarkment. Then, picking up the fragile form of Dick in his arms, he sped for the side of the forecastle.
As the long-horned steers swept down so close to him that he could feel their breaths and see the whites of their frenzied eyes, the boy leaped up and outward into the night.
CHAPTER XV.
JACK’S BRAVE LEAP.
What happened after the leap, Jack never knew clearly. He felt a wild, half-suffocating rush through the air and then a sensation of choking and strangling as a cold, stifling weight of water pressed in on him. Down, down, down he plunged. It seemed as if he would never rise. In his ears was an intolerable drumming. Everything was blood-red before his eyes.