After that she had not long to wait. In four minutes the runabout was
within a hundred yards, open exhausts cracking like a machine gun. And
then the very thing she expected and dreaded came about. Every moment
she expected to see him drive bows under and go down. Here and there at
intervals uplifted a comber taller than its fellows, standing, just as
it broke, like a green wall. Into one such hoary-headed sea the white
boat now drove like a lance. Stella saw the spray leap like a cascade,
saw the solid green curl deep over the forward deck and engine hatch
and smash the low windshield. She heard the glass crack. Immediately the
roaring exhausts died. Amid the whistle of the wind and the murmur of
broken water, the launch staggered like a drunken man, lurched off into
the trough, deep down by the head with the weight of water she had
taken.

The man in her stood up with hands cupped over his mouth.

"Can you hang on a while longer?" he shouted. "Till I can get my boat
bailed?"

"I'm all right," she called back.

She saw him heave up the engine hatch. For a minute or two he bailed
rapidly. Then he spun the engine, without result. He straightened up at
last, stood irresolute a second, peeled off his coat.

The launch lay heavily in the trough. The canoe, rising and clinging on
the crest of each wave, was carried forward a few feet at a time, taking
the run of the sea faster than the disabled motorboat. So now only a
hundred-odd feet separated them, but they could come no nearer, for the
canoe was abeam and slowly drifting past.

Stella saw the man stoop and stand up with a coil of line in his hand.
Then she gasped, for he stepped on the coaming and plunged overboard in
a beautiful, arching dive. A second later his head showed glistening
above the gray water, and he swam toward her with a slow, overhand
stroke. It seemed an age--although the actual time was brief
enough--before he reached her. She saw then that there was method in
his madness, for the line strung out behind him, fast to a cleat on the
launch. He laid hold of the canoe and rested a few seconds, panting,
smiling broadly at her.

"Sorry that whopping wave put me out of commission," he said at last.
"I'd have had you ashore by now. Hang on for a minute."

He made the line fast to a thwart near the bow. Holding fast with one
hand, he drew the swamped canoe up to the launch. In that continuous
roll it was no easy task to get Stella aboard, but they mana