“Do you think we’ve any chance, Tom?” said I.
A shake of the head was his only reply.
“It must have been here away,” said the mate, who stood up in the bow with a coil of rope at his feet, and a boat-hook in his hand. “Hold on, lads, did any one hear a cry?”
No one answered. We all ceased pulling, and listened intently; but the noise of the waves and the whistling of the winds were all the sounds we heard.
“What’s that floating on the water?” said one of the men, suddenly.
“Where away?” cried every one eagerly.
“Right off the lee-bow—there, don’t you see it?”
At that moment a faint cry came floating over the black water, and died away in the breeze.
The single word “Hurrah!” burst from our throats with all the power of our lungs, and we bent to our oars till we well-nigh tore the rollocks out of the boat.
“Hold hard! stern all!” roared the mate, as we went flying down to leeward, and almost ran over the hen-coop, to which a human form was seen to be clinging with the tenacity of a drowning man. We had swept down so quickly that we shot past it. In an agony of fear lest my friend should be again lost in the darkness, I leaped up and sprang into the sea. Tom Lokins, however, had noticed what I was about; he seized me by the collar of my jacket just as I reached the water, and held me with a grip like a vice till one of the men came to his assistance, and dragged me back into the boat. In a few moments more we reached the hen-coop, and Fred was saved!