"Pardon me. Just hearken for a minute. It may sound again," interrupted the first speaker.
Two figures leaned out over the Battery wall.
The owner of the deep voice was a large man who sloped off in all directions. A huge scratch-wig was pulled over his forehead. The other would have attracted attention anywhere. Above a tightly buttoned snuff-colored coat appeared a thin pinched face, whose little eyes looked out above prominent cheek bones, and whose chin was thrust forward from a voluminous neckcloth. His movements were quick and active as a weasel's. As he peered through the mist he pointed with his finger as if he were following something of whose constantly changing position he were not exactly sure.
"Yes; there it is," he said at last. "Gadzooks, it's a man's body! Here goes for it."
The little man vaulted to the top of the wall, and made a beautiful clean-cut dive out into the water. The counter-current set up by the ebb tide swirled softly against the sea-wall. It was easier swimming than a few rods further out.
"Hulloa!" called a voice at last.
"Hulloa! This way," answered the large man, who was deftly casting loose a stout rope made fast to a ring-bolt in one of the stone posts. "Here. This way."
"I have him," said the one in the water, panting slightly. "But whether alive or dead I know not. It's the body of a lad," he added, as he caught the rope the big man hurled to him.
Quickly he tied the end under Carter's armpits, and finding room for his fingers and toes in clefts in the masonry, he climbed unassisted to the Battery wall.