The angle of the careening ship was now so steep that he could not stand upon the deck, but as he slipped he caught hold of a vent pipe and so managed to reach the stateroom tier where all the doors hung open like the covers of so many inverted cigar boxes, flapping in the wind and rain.
The hatch had slid to the deck's edge and was held precariously by the doubtful strength of the straining rail.
"Get on!" one of the men called to Tom. "Hurry up!"
"The officer said only sixteen," he answered.
"Are you crazy?" another man called. "Get on while you can!"
"He said only sixteen," Tom called back impassively.
"It's every man for himself now and no orders!" shouted another. Perhaps it was the man who had usurped Tom's place.
"He said only——"
The rest of his answer was drowned by the crashing of the rail as the hatch went plunging from the deck into the black turmoil below. The last they saw of him, he was clinging to one of the flapping doors, his foot braced against a cable cleat, his shock of hair blowing wildly this way and that, the rain streaming from his face and soaking clothes.
He did not look at all like a hero, nor even like the picture of a scout on the cover of a boys' magazine....