Desmond knew his way about the ship by this time. Unhesitatingly, he made straight for the bridge. Charging through crowds of astonished and indignant passengers on the promenade deck, he swarmed up the ladder to the bridge-deck and thence to that forbidden ground, the bridge.
"Two people overboard!" he gasped breathlessly, and then a fit of coughing cut short his excited explanation.
Fortunately the third officer, who happened to be on duty at the time, was a man of resource. Ordering the quartermaster to "port sixteen," or, in other words, to turn the vessel until her head pointed in the opposite direction to her previous course, he promptly rang for half-speed ahead.
By this time the Huldebras was more than seven miles from the scene of the accident. All that could be done was to man one of the boats and stand by until the ship, guided by her wake, approached within reasonable distance of the spot where Van der Wyck had made such a close acquaintance with the Atlantic Ocean.
Meanwhile one of the boats had been swung out, manned and lowered until she was suspended by the falls within a few feet of the surface, ready to slip at the word of command, while in order to prevent the men's eyesight being baffled by the glare, all lights visible from without were switched off, with the exception of the regulation steaming lights.
Tiny, a prey to the deepest forebodings, remained on the bridge, gripping the rails and peering through the semi-darkness. No one paid the slightest attention to him. In the excitement the fact that he was now a trespasser on the bridge passed unnoticed.
The engine-room telegraph bell clanged again. The Huldebras was nearing the spot where it was supposed the lost man had fallen overboard; for with the exception of Desmond no one on board knew that there were two human beings in dire peril.
Suddenly a flash leapt up through the darkness, followed by a hollow report. Mystified, the third officer sprang to the binnacle and took a hurried compass-bearing. Somehow he connected that flash with the man in the water, but he was completely puzzled as to how the signal of distress had been made.
"Did you see that light?" he shouted in stentorian tones to the coxswain of the boat.
"Ay, ay, sir," was the reply.