“It was bad, Miss,” agreed the narrator. “And the feel of that water as I struck it! It was like a bath of sword-points. Well, that’s where the oar comes in! Bless the bit of wood it was cut from, it sure was a good, strong stick.
“When I flopped into the water, like a fish dumped out of a net, your grandpop, Freddie, took nary a chance at reachin’ me with the rope. He dropped the regular oars and took one of the pair he called lucky.
“‘Here,’ he yelled, ‘grab to that!’
“I can see the red flash now as it nearly hit me on the head, but though I did make a stab at it the water was that cold and the ice so thick on me hands that I couldn’t hold on.
“It’s pretty bad to be floppin’ around like that, I can tell you. But Len kept shoutin’ and when one of the other fellows got enough breath to stand up with, he took a hand at the rescuin’.
“It was him who dropped the mate to that oar overboard. Mad! I could hear Len yell through the thick of it all. But he held the last red oar.
“With the effort to keep up me blood heated some, and the next time I saw the flash of red I grabbed it good an’ proper. It took three of them to haul me up, but I clung to the red oar and that’s how I’m here this minute. Likewise, it’s why the oar is here with me.”
There was a long pause. The girls had been thrilled with the simple recital, so void of anything like conceit in the part that Denny himself had played in the work of rescue.