e laughed, a little jarring laugh, as the magazine
snapped back.

"They'll treat us as pirates if they get hands on us--and I've been
lashed in the face--with a sled-dog-whip," he said.

Charly said nothing as he loosened the long seaman's knife in his belt,
and Wyllard made no remonstrance, for there is, as he recognised, a
point beyond which prudence does not count. After what Overweg had
once or twice told him, it was unthinkable that they should fall into
Smirnoff's hands.

Then Lewson and Charly melted away into the darkness, and Wyllard and
the Siwash walked quietly down to the water's edge, a little up-stream
of the schooner, as the stream was running strong. They, however,
stripped off nothing, for it was evident that none of the rags they
left behind could be replaced, and they knew from experience that when
the first shock is over a man swimming in icy water is kept a little
warmer by his clothing. For all that, the cold struck through Wyllard
like a knife when he flung himself forward and swung his left hand out,
and it was perhaps a minute before he was clearly conscious of anything
beyond the physical agony and the mental effort to retain control of
his faculties. Then he made out the schooner, a vague, blurred shape a
little down-stream of him, and he swam furiously, his face dipping
under each time his left hand came out.

He drew level with her, clutched at her cable, a foot short, and was
driven against her bows. Then the stream swept him onward, gasping,
and clawing savagely at her slippery side, until his fingers found a
hold. It was merely the rounded top of a bolt, but with a desperate
effort he clutched the bent iron that led up from it to one of the
dead-eyes of the mainmast-shrouds. He could not, however, draw himself
up any further, and he hung on, wondering when his strength would fail
him, until the Siwash, who had already crawled up the cable, leaned
down from above and seized his shoulder. In another moment or two he
reached the rail, and went staggering across the deck, dripping, and
half dazed.

Action was, however, imperatively necessary, and he braced himself for
the effort. The schooner was lying with her anchor up-stream, but he
did not think it would be possible to heave her over it and break it
out unless he waited until the others arrived, and it would then be a
lengthy and, what was more to the purpose, a noisy operation. The
anchor must be sacrificed, but there was