Without further words or conscious movements from the silent pilot they managed to get him unhooked from his belt and parachute harness, to lower him, precariously limp, into the rubber boat, which Larry held onto as Jeff, half supporting his inert co-pilot, propelled it to their own craft.
As they moved slowly along Larry, fending off a clump of tough grass into which the breeze sought to drift their rubber shell, caught sight of something dimly white, far in among the muddy grass roots.
He left his support, swam across the smaller channel, carefully, and secured the life preserver which had dropped into a heavy clump of the grass and then had floated free of the mud, held only by the end of a tangled string—and the skin of an empty, oilskin pouch, torn and ripped to tatters, that hung to the cord.
When Larry rejoined Jeff, he flung the life preserver into the space behind the control seat of the amphibian, leaving it there without comment as he helped Jeff to lift and drop the still unconscious man into his own forward place.
Then, pushing off in the rubber boat, he sat still, his dry clothes in a compact bundle in the boat thwarts, while Jeff let the wind and tide-run carry his amphibian out of the channel to where he could get sea space for a start, to get the amphibian pontoons “on the step” from which, with his silent cargo of human tragedy, Jeff lifted into air and went out of sight, southbound.
Sitting until he dried, Larry donned his garments.
“Gast—” he murmured. “Gast——”
Had he heard any name around the airports like Gaston?
“Well,” he reflected, “its something, now, anyway. We can look for a Frenchman—and learn if there’s one named Gaston.”
He sculled back to get under the shading, up-tilted wing of the seaplane, studying what he saw of its half submerged after place.