Jimmy now swam up. "I'm all right again, but for a minute I thought I was going to die. I was swimming the overhand when, as I drove my under-hand ahead, I stuck it right through the body of this nasty, slimy thing. It slipped right up to my shoulder and stuck there. I thought sure something had me by the arm, and I stopped swimming and sank." Jimmy, at the memory of it, raised his arms and smote them upon the water, throwing up a shower of spray. The action relieved his nerves.
"Don't do it again, please," said Frank. "Look ahead there, just to the right of the Pier light! I think that's a light in our window! I wonder if mother set it there for me. We don't seem any nearer, do we?"
"Maybe we're being carried out to sea," said Jimmy, but he was sorry the next minute that he had said it. Frank made no answer. He was thinking of the comfortable sitting room at Seawall, and wondering if his father and mother were hovering anxiously around there, or on the veranda looking seaward. Perhaps they might be even now down at the end of the Pier. Yes, they would be down at the Pier waiting. Or perhaps they were getting searchers to scour the bay for them. But would they find them, or would the sea next morning toss up on the shore two white bodies limp and bedraggled?
"I'm doing the best I can, mother," Frank whispered to himself, as on the wave crest he caught a fleeting glimpse of the lights, and the water in his eyes was not all from the wave top that at that moment went over him. He wondered about the two boys who had been left behind. How far had the water gained on their little island of rock? If he and Jimmy got to land and gave the warning, was there still time to get back and save them from the sea that must be even now creeping up on their feet? He shuddered in spite of himself. It was bad enough to be out here struggling with the sea, but it was something to do. It would be a hundred times worse back there waiting, waiting, watching the tide creep nearer and nearer to the last refuge on the highest point of the rock. He struck out more determinedly with the thought of the lone watchers in his mind. He must save them.
CHAPTER IX. SAVED.
Suddenly from the shore there shot up into the air a long, curving streak of fire. Then came a dull, booming explosion, and the dark sea was lit up for a moment. The darkness which followed seemed even more black than before.
"A rocket!" shouted Frank. "They're giving us a signal."
"Gee," said Jimmy, after a moment, "it feels good to know they're thinking of us, but it doesn't help much."