“Coming! coming!” reached them faintly from below, but Robin did not come. The hasty summons induced him to leap over a chest in returning. He struck his head violently against a beam, and fell back stunned.
With another wild shout his friends rushed down the companion-hatch to hasten his movements by force. They found him almost insensible. Lifting him quickly, they carried, him on deck, and bore him to the stern of the vessel.
“Robin! Robin!” cried Sam, in an agony of impatience—for the raft was by that time far astern, besides which the shades of evening were beginning to descend—“do try to rally. We must swim. We’re almost too late. Can you do it?”
“Yes, yes, I can swim like a duck,” cried Robin, rising and staggering towards the bulwarks.
“But I can’t swim at all!” cried Stumps in a voice of horror.
Sam stopped as if suddenly paralysed. Then, laying hold of Robin, held him back. He felt, as he looked at the dark heaving sea and the now distant raft, that it was not possible for him and Slagg to save both their injured and their helpless comrade.
“Too late!” he said in a voice of despair, as he sat down and for a moment covered his face with his hands. Slagg looked at him with a bewildered rather than a despairing expression.
“So, we’ll have to sink together since we can’t swim together,” he said at last, with a touch of reckless vexation, as he gazed at the naturally stupid and by that time imbecile face of his friend Stumps.
“Come, only cowards give way to despair,” cried Sam, starting up. “We have one chance yet, God be praised, but let’s work with a will, boys, for the time is short.”