ting at, the more readily as I
saw one man paying out a thin line over the rail; so I looked eagerly
about me, and presently saw, some thirty fathoms away, a white lifebuoy
floating in the midst of a wide surface of foam, the ship at this time
being perhaps twice as far from me as the lifebuoy. But just as I
started to strike out for the buoy, another heavy sea swept over me,
treating me pretty much as the first had done, and all but suffocating
me into the bargain.

I thought that, hampered as I was with the boy's inert body, I should
never reach the buoy, for I seemed utterly unable to make so much as an
inch of progress in that frightful sea; and once, after I had been
overwhelmed about a dozen times, the thought came to me that if I wanted
to save myself I must give up the idea of saving the body, which after
all would be a useless task, since I felt certain that the lad was dead.
But no; I could not return to the ship and face the lad's mother
empty-handed. I could picture her despair under such circumstances, for
Julius was Mrs Vansittart's only son, and, spoiled as he was, I
believed that she loved him more than her husband, more than her
daughter, more than her own life. No, it was not to be thought of; I
had undertaken the task and I must execute it. I had raised her hopes,
and I would not disappoint them if God would only give me strength to
reach that buoy.

At length, after what seemed like a century of effort, I did reach it,
and, laying my hand upon its nearest rim, tilted it over my head and
under my armpits, at the very moment--as I afterward learned--when those
aboard had paid out four sets of signal halyards to the bare end of the
fourth set!

And now came the delicate and difficult task of hauling me alongside in
the shortest possible space of time, without parting the halyards on the
one hand or drowning me on the other. But Kennedy was the man for the
job. Even as I vaulted the rail and plunged into the water his active
mind, aided by past experience, had enabled him not only to grasp the
full import of my hasty words concerning the lifebuoy and the signal
halyards, but also to foresee exactly what must inevitably happen. And
while he was in the very act of unreeving the peak ensign halyards,
preparatory to bending them on to the lifebuoy which his ready knife had
slashed off the taffrail, he was shouting for somebody to pass the word
for Mackenzie, the engineer.

When Mac, already issui