the two were struggling.

Dick had reached the drowning boy, and was holding him up in firm
athletic grasp, but there was a nasty choppy sea running, which,
breaking into spume, both blinded and choked him. He was treading water
now, as though to wait until the boat should be lowered. But Harley
Greenoak had picked up the lifebuoy and was towing it towards the pair,
whom in a few minutes he was seen to reach. Then something like a gasp
of relief escaped the spectators. Those two powerful men, with the aid
of the lifebuoy, should have no difficulty in keeping both themselves
and their charge afloat until they were picked up. But there was one to
whom this consideration brought little if any relief at all, and that
one was Sir Anson Selmes.

The agony of the unhappy father was simply hideous to endure. The
conversation of a minute or two back burnt into his brain like letters
of fire. These waters were swarming with sharks, and had not Greenoak
just declared that no consideration would tempt him to venture into the
sea at this point. Yet hardly had the words left his mouth than he
deliberately did that very thing. Even his frenzied apprehension for
the safety of his son could not dim a glow of admiration for this cool,
brave man who had courted the ghastly death he himself had pronounced to
be almost certain, when the object was the saving of life. Every second
seemed an hour, every minute a week. Would they _never_ lower that
boat?

But the way on the steamer was far too great to allow of her being
stopped at once, consequently she was being brought round to the
submerged three, and although this could not be done all in a minute, it
could be in far less time than that taken to pull a boat any distance in
such a choppy sea.

Hurrah! The boat dropped from the davits, and went plashing through the
waves as fast as sinew and muscle could send her.

"We're all jolly," bawled Dick Selmes, "only look sharp. It's beastly
cold."

The words, audible to those on the ship, raised a laugh that rounded off
into a mighty cheer, as the boat was seen to gain its objective and the
three were hoisted in.

"Thirteen minutes from the time of going over the side," said the
officer in charge of the ship, closing his watch with a snap. "Not bad
time that, sir?"

"No. It's good," said the captain, who, half asleep in his cabin, had
been roused by the uproar and had quickly ascended to the bridge.

"Drowned rat Number