“You can’t haul us up,” Ben instructed from below. “Just hold on, and I think I can get out of here by myself.”
He swam off in the darkness and was lost to view. Penny clung desperately to the rope, knowing that if she relaxed for an instant, the man, already half drowned, would submerge for good. Her arms began to ache. It seemed to her she could not hold on another instant.
Then Ben, his clothes plastered to his thin body, came running across the planks.
Without a word he seized the rope, and together they raised the man to the dock. In the darkness Penny saw only that he was slender, and in civilian clothes.
Stretching him out on the dock boards, they prepared to give artificial resuscitation. But it was unnecessary. For at the first pressure on his back, the man rolled over and muttered: “Cut it out. I’m okay.”
Then he lay still, exhausted, but breathing evenly.
“You were lucky to get him, Ben,” Penny said as she knelt beside the stranger. “If the current had carried him beneath those barges, he never would have been taken out alive.”
“I had to dive deep,” Ben admitted. “Found him plastered right against the side of the first barge. Yeah, I was lucky, and so is he.”
The man stirred again, and sat up. Penny tried to support him, but he moved away, revealing that he wanted no help.
“Who pushed you overboard?” Ben asked.