“Here I am,” I kept calling. And sometimes I gave the Silver Fox call (that’s the call of my patrol) so he would know where I was. But somewhere another voice kept giving the same calls and I knew it was an echo and maybe he wouldn’t know what way to go when he started back. Every time I called the echo called too, from somewhere far off.
Pretty soon I could hear voices and I heard Hervey say, “Let go your arm, leave it to me.”
“I’m here,” I called. “Here—here—here—here I am. That other voice is an echo—here I am—right here—right here——”
Pretty soon I could see him coming out of the mist. It seemed just as if it broke open to let him through. He was holding some one up and I could see a head sort of hanging back and looking up at the sky.
“All right?” I asked.
“Sure thing,” Hervey said. “Get hold of him, will you?”
“At the stern,” I said. I was glad to show him I knew that much anyway, never to lift a person over the side of a small boat.
It was some job getting the rescued fellow aboard, and then I saw it was our friend, the sharpy. His coat with the slanting pockets looked awful funny all wet and clinging to him. He was all right, that was one good thing, but his sharpy suit—good night! The worst that had happened to him was a good scare.
“He was doing a new dance when I grabbed him,” Hervey said.
The fellow just lay in the bottom of the boat breathing hard, but I could see he was all right. He reached up with his left hand and fixed his funny little necktie, and then I knew he was all right. I guess he would do that in his sleep.