It saved him; for a bell clanged in the engine-room, and the tug began to make sternway. It saved him for but a minute, though.
Thoughtless, selfish, and for once an utter fool, the exultant skipper of the Three Sisters sought to gloat over his rival.
"On board the Quinn," yelled Barney. "Say, Jim Skelly, this is Barney Hodge talkin'. You didn't know he had friends in the rowboat business, did you?"
A curse rang from the Quinn's pilot-house, and Dan did not wait for anything else. Well he knew what would happen next, and he bent all his strength to his oars. He heard the jingle of a bell, and the tug started right for him.
"Look out!" yelled Dan, working the oars like a madman. But not a word came from the tug, moving silently, inexorably upon him like, some black, implacable monster.
Suddenly Dan cast aside his oars and dived over the side. The next instant the sharp, copper-bound nose of the tug struck the rowboat fairly amidships, grinding it against the steel side of the freighter, crushing it into matchwood.
A great numbness passed over the man. He was dazed; and as wave after wave splashed over his head, he struggled dumbly to reach the ladder. Then under the reaction from the icy shock, an electric thrill of energy and vitality passed through his body.
He saw that he had been carried to about amidships, and the ladder was well toward the bow. With lusty strokes he struck out along the steel sides, rising over the waves like a duck. Five minutes elapsed, and then with a sudden fear, Dan realized, in glancing at the bow, that he had not made ten feet in all that time and effort.
It was the current, which was ripping along the hull at the rate that would have affected the speed of a powerful steam launch. Dan had not noticed it before. He struggled desperately, but to no avail, and then he uttered his first cry for help. He could not see the deck, being so close to the hull; and for the same reason he could not have been seen had his cry been heard. Again he called for assistance, but there was no answer, no sound, save that of the water buffeting past the vessel.
He ceased to waste his strength in fruitless cries, devoting all that remained to his struggle to reach the ladder. But his strokes were weaker than before and he found he was being carried back upon the current instead of making headway against it. Fight as he would, he could feel that sliding, hopeless drag against which he was powerless to combat. His strength vanished ounce by ounce. His arms grew so numb with fatigue and cold that he could do nothing but move them up and down, dog fashion. On he went, down toward the stern of the vessel.