"Easy!" screamed Billy.
But the ballast of the Never Give Up shifted, and she toppled over. Boy and dog were thrown into the sea—the one aft, the other forward. Billy dived deep to escape entanglement with the rigging of the boat. He had long ago learned the lesson that presence of mind wins half the fight in perilous emergencies. The coward miserably perishes where the brave man survives. With his courage leaping to meet his predicament, he struck out for windward and rose to the surface.
He looked about for the punt. She had been heavily weighted with ballast, and he feared for her. What was he to do if she had been too heavily weighted? Even as he looked she sank. She had righted under water; the tip of the mast was the last he saw of her.
The sea—cold, fretful, vast—lay all about him. The coast was half a mile to windward; the punts, out to sea, were laboriously beating towards him, and could make no greater speed. He had to choose between the punts and the rocks.
A whine—with a strange note in it—attracted his attention. The big dog had caught sight of him, and was beating the water in a frantic effort to approach quickly. But the dog had never whined like that before.
"Hi, Skipper!" Billy called. "Steady, b'y! Steady!"
Billy took off his boots as fast as he could. The dog was coming nearer, still whining strangely, and madly pawing the water. Billy was mystified. What possessed the dog? It was as if he had been seized with a fit of terror. Was he afraid of drowning? His eyes were fairly flaring. Such a light had never been in them before.
In the instant he had for speculation the boy lifted himself high in the water and looked intently into the dog's eyes. It was terror he saw in them; there could be no doubt about that, he thought. The dog was afraid for his life. At once Billy was filled with dread. He could not crush the feeling down. Afraid of Skipper—the old, affectionate Skipper—his own dog, which he had reared from a puppy! It was absurd.
But he was afraid, nevertheless—and he was desperately afraid.
"Back, b'y!" he cried. "Get back, sir!"