He threw one leg over the rail as he spoke, balancing his slender body easily. Miss Simpson uttered a muffled shriek, and sprang to hold him, gripping at his knee.
"'Oo get away!" Bobby threatened. He twisted himself from her grasp, bending outwards, just as Dick came upon the scene. Dick gave a low whistle.
"Come down out of that, Bob, you silly ass!"
Bobby started at the voice. Simultaneously the ship rolled, and then a shriek from Miss Simpson rent the air and she clutched at him unavailingly as he lost his balance and fell. The list of the ship sent him clear of her, down to the lazy green swell, flecked with foam from the bow. He gave one cry—a frightened baby's scream for help. The water choked it almost unheard.
Dick did not hesitate. He reflected afterwards with shame that he did not even shout, "Man overboard!" as do all well-conducted rescuers; instead he gave an incoherent cry of, "Coming, old chap!" as he swung himself up by the stanchion and dived outwards. It did not seem far—he had often dived from the top of the gallery round the swimming baths near his school. What he was not prepared for was the icy coldness of the water. It caught his breath—he came up blinded and gasping, unable for a second to see anything. Then, just as despair seized him, he caught sight of a white jersey a few yards away on the crest of a wave, and flung himself through the water towards it. His fingers closed on it, and the wave swallowed them both.
They came up again after what seemed an eternity. Dick's head was bursting, and his whole body numb. Mechanically his training in life-saving came back to him, and he turned on his back, still gripping Bobby, from whose little body the breath had been knocked so effectually by the fall that he was merely a log in the water, unable to struggle. It was as well for Dick, for there was no fight left in him. The icy water chilled him, body and soul; he could only keep afloat, with his fingers twisted into Bobby's jersey. His mother's face seemed to float before his tired eyes.
Back on the Moondarra Miss Simpson's despairing shrieks had been drowned by the long hoot of the steamer's siren. The officer on duty on the bridge had seen Dick's dive; almost before he had struck the water the steamer's engines were reversed, life-belts had gone skimming overboard, and a boat's crew was working desperately at the davits swinging the boat outboard. Quicker still two others had flung themselves after the boys—Dick's friend, the boatswain, and the thin, silent man who sat at their table. It was he who reached them first; his voice came to Dick as though muffled in wool, like the voice of a person very far away.
"Keep still, old chap; I'll take the kid."
Bobby's weight was lifted, but Dick could not detach his clutching fingers from his jersey. He saw, as in a mist, a face near him in the water, but the cruel cold held him, choked him, gripped his very heart. He moved his free hand feebly, resisting, as he knew he must, an overpowering instinct to grasp at the new-comer. Another voice came, even further away.
"I can manage this one," it said. There was comfort in that, since Dick knew he could not manage anything more. The waves seemed to be swinging him in a great cold bed—up and down, up and down. A hand was under his head, more restful than the softest pillow he had ever known; he let himself sink back with a little sigh, just as the blue sky above him flickered suddenly and turned black. Close, very close, was the sound of oars working furiously in rowlocks, but he did not hear them.