"Were—were you too late, Uncle Jim?" stammered Dan.
"Yes, he must have been dead when he struck the water," slowly returned Captain Wetherly. "But I'm glad I went after him. He made a brave man's finish. It's awful tough on Bart, but he is standing up under it like a thoroughbred. Jerry Pringle staked his life and lost it for me."
Captain Jim wiped his eyes and coughed. Bill McKnight ventured to say to Dan:
"He'd have done the same trick to save one of his own deck-hands. Jerry Pringle was a brave and ready man, we all know that. It was instinct. He didn't have time to figure it out. But I reckon God Almighty will give him plenty of credit and square accounts for whatever he did wrong. Whew! I can't realize it a little bit."
"The tug will take him down to Key West right away," said Captain Jim. "I'm going along with Jerry Pringle on his last voyage. Want to come, Dan? It will do Bart a whole lot of good to have you as a shipmate and you can tell him that his father was a man to be proud of. We'll forget everything that happened before to-day. You come aboard the Kenilworth with me and I'll leave orders for my men. I'll have to be back here to-morrow if this steamer is to come off the Reef. I have a notion that Jerry Pringle was sorry he ever helped to put her on there. And from watching him lately I believe we couldn't please him any better than by getting the Kenilworth off and mending the wrong he planned to do."
As they boarded the Kenilworth Captain Bruce met them and asked in a voice hoarse with emotion:
"They tell me he has slipped his cable. If my ship had not stranded it would not have happened."
"What are you going to do about it? Let me be accused of helping to wreck your steamer?" sternly replied Captain Wetherly. "Jeremiah Pringle has squared his accounts and made his record clean. But how about you?"